Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was a drone.

It stood before Senator Ratbat on the rooftop, sheltered in the docking bay where he accepted his personal shipments, freshly unbound from the protective packaging that it had arrived in.

Even at his brisk approach on the receiving platform, he could tell that it had turned out stunningly.  Exquisitely crafted by hand, molded to exacting specifications, and polished to a diamond sheen with custom matching lacquer, it managed to outshine even the factory’s previous attempts, all of which he’d felt the need to return.  It could be that the manufacturers had finally gotten this drone right….but he knew it would be impossible to tell that much on appearances alone.

His problem up until now had not been with how the drones looked.

“Activate,” Senator Ratbat commanded as he stopped in front of it.  His voice rang out sharp and clear inside the docking chamber, his silken intonation attempting to bury the anticipation of annoyance: he hated having to be present for this.  As busy as he’d been with affairs of state, he wanted to trust his personal assistants to be able to receive a simple drone, but neither the shipment nor the servants had met his expectations the last three times.  Sadly, his underlings were not as discerning as he.  They didn’t catch small nuances in behavior algorithms, and they couldn’t differentiate between a high-gloss polymer and an actual carbon hexagonal matrix coating.  He’d learned after he had sent the third one back that it was necessary to look over his acquisitions personally.

This one needed to be right from the start.

The delivery-mech appeared to have some inkling of that, also.  He stood at the ready, hovering several feet away from the drone, watching it with a slight shaking of his knees.  Ratbat thought that he recognized the posture, confirming the familiar, timid stance of a terrified automaton with a single glance over the common laborer.  The mech seemed ready to run, as if something might go wrong. 

Ratbat dearly hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

Thus far, however, there were no signs of flaws.  The drone primed to life on his command, shedding the last few clinging strips of packing compounds as its engine started up, vibrating only slightly as it warmed. 

Unlike the other drones there was no flicker of life, no motion, and no evidence of any kind that this new model was aware of its surroundings.  It did not shift to look towards him when Ratbat took a step to the side.  It did not query for its purpose or its orders.  It did not send out a radar pulse. The only indication that its processor had activated, in fact, was a faint buzzing along the back of Ratbat’s sensors, ions polarizing with an inverse tang, that ‘new drone’ scent he recognized. 

Nothing else.

Nervous, the mech who had delivered the drone shuffled from one foot to the other, glancing down at his receipt-pad.  “Er…boss.  I hate to rush ya, but I’ve got--”

“Time.”  Ratbat finished, calmly, a delicate hand rising to override whatever excuse the worker made as his optics continued to bore into the blank faceplates of the drone.  “You have time.”

The delivery-mech stilled, and in the sudden and very attentive silence Ratbat waited to see what his new drone would do.

It continued to do nothing, standing at the ready, engines whirring, failing to display all signs of self-awareness. 

This did nothing to calm the waiting mech, his mouth gaping, his optics shifting uneasily from Ratbat to the drone…but that was no surprise.  Ratbat was sure that this commoner had never seen a drone like this before. 

Of course he hadn’t.

Shipments such as this weren’t common.  Drones were still too new, too cutting edge, and too controversial for exposure to the general public.  Certainly the dock worker had to have heard of them or glimpsed them in advertisments, but he’d never own one or be around one frequently enough to understand a drone’s typical behavior.  He would have no concept of the difference between a batch-produced model and a high-end customization.  He’d only be capable of listening to the news reports, unwittingly affected by whatever drivel the writers were currently feeding them about ‘unholy sparks,’ ignorant of what processes actually went on to create Cybertron’s newest work-force.

This commoner, unsurprisingly, wasn’t afraid of Ratbat’s approval or disapproval. 

He was afraid of Ratbat’s drone.

That would make this testing perfect.

“Drone.”  Ratbat began, gesturing to the delivery-mech while pointedly addressing his newest acquisition.  “Provide this courier’s receipt-pad with my authentication, access level 48-3927, Senator Ratbat of the third nexus council, vocal imprint beta.  Begin.”

There was no verbal response.  Instead, the drone simply obeyed, turning with precision to face its quarry, solid heels clicking loudly across polished floors as it advanced.  

Startled, the delivery-mech began to take a step back, and then another, and another, until the tires on his back pressed up against the metal of his cargo’s hold.  Apparently unconcerned by this reaction, the drone continued its progress, methodically, each step of equal measure to the last.  It bore down upon the smaller courier, and reached out toward it with a single cable that extruded from its torso, barbed at the end. 

Obviously terrified, the delivery-mech held the receipt pad between them, bringing it to bear as if it could provide protection.  This hardly stopped the drone’s prehensile cable from snaking forward, winding around the device, and feeling across the surface until it found an open port…

…where it plugged in.  A millicycle passed, data transferring, before the tiny red diode on the pad turned green. 

The Authentication was accepted.

The drone was now his.

“Disconnect and return.”  Ratbat commanded, and watched as it performed accordingly, unwinding its cable and leaving a shuddering, awe-struck mech in its wake. 

Frozen in place, the delivery driver stared at the Senator while the drone departed, watching for some sign that it was safe to move again.  It wasn’t until the drone was solidly settled safely behind his owner that the courier even dared to lower the datapad, shaking his head. “I’ve got a return receipt in the cockpit if you’d like.”

“That won’t be necessary.”  Ratbat finally smiled, tight-lipped and Austere, looking just past his left shoulder where the drone had taken up a position of subservience suitable for its status.

“B…but!”  The delivery mech started, glancing down to the delicate receipt-pad that his fingers had left dents in.  “You sure this one’s safe, sir?”

“This one?”  Ratbat arched a finely carved brow ridge at the drone, letting his optics travel up and down the frame of his new drone as if confirming its worth.  “This is the first one they’ve done right.”

“He’s right?  Uh.  Right.”  Obviously not convinced, the mech clung to the pad a few seconds longer, watching Ratbat to make sure he didn’t change his mind.  When a few beats passed without incident, the delivery-mech’s shoulders relaxed with a deep ex-vent of hot air, shaking himself down before he shelved the pad.  Without further delay he turned to retreat toward the pilot’s chair, clearly eager to leave now that his cargo was delivered and signed off.  “Well, he’s yours, and he authorized it officially for you.”

“Yes.”  Ratbat’s smile grew stale at the use of the autonomous pronoun, though he remained pleased despite the commoner’s misinterpretation.  “It did.”  His long fingers reached up, tapping flightily along the dark blue sloping shoulder, practically purring at the lack of response.  “It obeyed completely.”

This time, the drone they’d sent him didn’t even suffer from a personality.

“Come.”  He said, speaking calmly through the sudden loud whine of the transport’s warming rotors.  “There’s much that we have to discuss.”  He turned smoothly, leading the way inside, knowing that it would follow, knowing that it would obey him unerringly, and knowing that this was the first success in what would become many drone-centered purchases.

This was the future, and much like the expensive sheen on the surface of his customized drone’s plating? 

It was looking very bright, indeed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was a drone.

When it was online, it provided a number of specific functions.

Every 36 cycles, it would exit its docking closet and traverse 2.7 meters to the relay dock. 

At the relay dock, it would plug in and commence processing airwaves. 

For 33 cycles, it would monitor and intercept transmissions, attempt to decode any encrypted messages, and file each broadcast away in order of importance.

Importance was a variable, calculated by the addition of a multitude of factors.

Mentions of Ratbat.  Mentions of the Council.  Mentions of seditious acts.  Mentions of unrest.  Mentions of scandal.  Mentions of Decimus, Optarus, and Septimus. Mentions of Sentinel Prime.  Mentions of account numbers.  Mentions of privatization codes. 

Its list was extensive, with various numerical weights assigned in ratio to peripheral references, number of occurrences, and urgency as allocated by supplemental programming.

After 33 cycles had passed, it would return to its docking closet and recharge for 3 cycles.

Interruptions to this routine were to only be authorized by Sentator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, third nexus council, voice command recognition required. 

In addition to its base manufactured skill set, it had been equipped to monitor short-range transmissions, safely interface with foreign technology, pilot vehicles of class L-MM, translate all known programming languages, and process…

Sound.

It heard everything.

It heard…something.

Eighteen cycles into its thirty-eighth shift, a recognized pattern emerged and was misfiled.

It was incorrectly labeled as ‘important.’

It was re-filed into a sub-secondary directory, override 26-A, new-folder substantiation authority Qx2.

It was not deleted.

All other processes continued without incident, and the associated error was recorded, forwarded to the appropriate authorities, and ignored.

Chapter Text

For the second time in his life, Megatronus’s path had led him somewhere that he didn’t belong.

He thought about what he was doing in a drone factory as he stared at the metal carapace of a drone, watching it for a half-click before it flew on, whisked away by huge robotic arms that carried it along a towering assembly track.  It disappeared up the line, moving into another part of the building where the metal catwalks hung, suspended far above the duracrete floors and complicated machinery.

Another torso arrived a moment later, pausing long enough for him to zero in on circuits in its shoulders, raw, coded by color and function and nestled in-between slick gears.  Two arms were presented next, and were grafted expertly in place before the drone-form vanished and the process repeated. 

This was the facility where drones were made, and it was like no place he had been before.

The building was long and open, its expanse of grease-stained flooring mostly crowded with loud engines that powered bulky pieces of equipment, each capable of one extremely specialized task.  Everywhere he looked there was motion, conveyor belts moving raw materials into smelting machines, smelting machines dumping molten metal into pressers, pressers flattening shapes out of specific molds and ejecting them into bins for sorting and piecing.  Standing on the catwalks he could see everything, but he didn’t like what he saw.

It was too noisy here, the chaos of a thousand working gears and servo mechanisms creating a cacophony that made him ill-at-ease, the broad, bright spaces too much of a contrast to the dark, cramped tunnels of the mines he’d once called home.  The workers had less autonomy as well, acting more like legs to ferry parts from one piece of equipment to the next, while limited AIs handled most of the construction of the drones.  All laid out like this, it was easy to see it as it was: machinery making machinery; drones making more complicated drones.  The factory could construct a hundred in a cycle, programming them with any number of options, setting them loose onto the workforce at a hefty cost until there was machinery operating machinery constructing more machinery.  They were workers you could buy and sell, legally, who needed only a brief amount of rest and a minimum of recharge. 

He could see them down below: sorting defective limbs from acceptable ones, oiling up the gear shafts that drove the relentless power-arms around.  Already they were taking over jobs that mechs like him had done only a stellar cycle before. They did not deviate from their intended purpose.  They did not talk.  They did not look around.

It was a wonder that the factory had any need for laborers like him at all.

He was here for a good reason, however.  Drones weren’t common enough yet to be fully integrated, which was why he’d only seen them in this factory where they were readily available and could be easily watched and tested.  Until they had been proven in the industry for a few stellar cycles, he suspected this was one of the few places where they’d be accepted.

Despite their presence, there was still a need for workers who could think and workers who could act autonomously.  There was a need for workers who could smile and shake hands, and there was a need for workers who could negotiate and authorize deals with customers. There was a need for workers from the underworld, too, dockhands, lifters, and greasers who were so desperate for money that’d they’d be cheaper to hire than the factory’s cost to build a drone.  

They’d hired him, after all.

He didn’t even look the part.  Despite countless Cycles of arena battles and the dozens of underground upgrades he’d gone through trying to escape his past, it was still obvious to most mechs that he’d been a miner, once.  Miners were not small, and they weren’t known for their capacity in intellectual endeavors or for their great magnetic personalities.  He’d been built to pulverize rock, or at his furthest height of career ascention, to recognize where there might be better rocks for others to pulvarize.  No amount of mods would make him fully street-legal inside of a city, so he couldn’t exactly function as a transport, and he didn’t have the right adaptors on his appendages to raise and lower pallates.  He was exactly like the dozens of other ill-suited mechs who were starting to gather in packs in the industrial zone, wandering from factory to factory, desperate for any employment they could get.

He’d just happened to be the ill-suited mech with a friend who knew the manager.

That was how it worked.  His status as a fighter had given him connections and opportunities, and when it had become necessary to get employed at a drone factory…all he’d had to do was ask.  Gladiators like him had names, when most had none.  They had money and food, when living wages were hard to come by.  They had places to live, and team-mates, and more hope than they had any right to possess after getting kicked out of the mines, when other mechs did not.  They didn’t all come from the mines, but his story was not unique.  If you lost your purpose, you either died on the street or died in the ring to the sounds of chanting and the adoration of fans.  There wasn’t much of a choice, when he thought of it like that.

It couldn’t last, of course.  Already, he’d seen the same rumblings and warnings signs that he’d been too naïve to recognize before the mines closed down, and he knew what they meant.  He’d watched automation change the need for miners, and he was watching it again, here in this factory, echoed in the strangely blank faceplates of the drones. 

These were machines who could take the place of sentient workers. 

It was the same thing that had happened to him, and it was hard not to notice it this time.  It was hard not to notice when the streets started to fill up with bots running on empty, and it was hard not to notice when the bets placed on him lowered week by week while the number of desperate mechs he had to fight increased.

Employment opportunities were dwindling.  New drones were appearing.  The two were correlated and he was afraid of what that meant.  No one else had thought about it.  No one else had realized how thin the wall between employment and death could become. 

This time, however, he was not so powerless.                                  

He’d had two choices.

Either he moved, now, and learned about drones and what they meant for the future….or he starved, later, when there was no one left to buy a ticket to his match.  It was as simple as that, so he’d gotten in contact with the right mechs and he’d started his first shift that morning.  He’d been told what to expect, been shown the transports that would take him into work each day, and been handed the experience-chits that Clench had forged especially for him.  Then the old mech had frowned, called him a fool one last time, and pushed him out the door.

That had been it.

Now he was here on his own, working for an hourly wage for the first time in too long.  The work had been grueling but familiar, and no one had commented if he was equipped with heavy, offroad treads instead of city wheels.  They all did the same tasks no matter what their alt-mode was, loading and unloading drones and raw materials, ferrying components to machines, or complaining about the price of energon while pallets were awkwardly stacked.  They didn’t recognize him.

They probably weren’t expecting a gladiator to show up here, stretching servos that would never need to be used when fighting.

No one thought about Gladiators outside of the ring.

No one expected them to survive. 

Reaching the end of the suspended walkway, Megatronus stopped beside the wall, leaning against it while he rubbed an overheated joint.  His day was over and he could leave whenever he wanted, returning back down to the dark coolness of the Underground where he could get a few hours to let his engine rest before his shift tomorrow.  If he drove hard he still could make it to the station before the transport pulled out, but with his treads still new and raw after Hook’s ‘civilian disguise’ had been grafted on he wasn’t looking forward to that.  He could catch the next transport back in a few cycles. 

He was hardly the only mech to remain, besides.

The rest of the dock-hands were clustered around the huge, open receiving doors, some still lifting crates while others stretched, taking advantage of the shift change to talk to the fresh workers coming in.  No one had noticed the fact that he’d wandered off.  He was too new to be missed, yet. 

He liked that, because it gave him an opportunity to look around…and so he was here.

From the catwalks he could see nearly everything, and he let his optics trail over the floor.  It was not difficult to track where supplies moved through various parts of the building, starting at the receiving docks.  Most of the materials that arrived were raw, with the exception of the processor chips which came in large, locked and carefully padded boxes from Altihex.  Those went into finished drones at the end of the assembly line, and from there the drones vanished…

Underneath the catwalks, into the wall.

He didn’t know what was back there.  Even from his vantage point, the wall seemed just like any other wall leading outside. 

It couldn’t have been that, however, because just above where the drones passed through on there was a window.  It was a strange panel of indigo-tinted plastiglass, the color at odds with the few other dirty windows scattered around the building, large enough to peer inside from the walk-way but small enough to only take a fraction of the wallspace.  Instead of smog-grey sunlight, an ultra-voiolet glow spilled out from it onto the hammered metal catwalks, occupying spectra just outside of his viewing range. It left him with more than a slight processor headache while his vision flicked through multiple modes, but his viewscreens couldn’t find a filter that would process it.

This, he wasn’t familiar with.  Heavy equipment was easy to recognize whether it was converting energon or building drones, but oddly purple windows were a mystery to him. 

Even more mysterious was that the finished drone shells passed below, curving away from the towering machines and into the wall beneath the plastiglass.   Their tiny entrance was just large enough to fit them, the bright neon light splashing out around each silhouette as it passed slowly, then stopped, over and over and over again as the conveyor belt carried them through.

With all other components assembled on the drones, there was only one last step that Megatronus could think of.  The idea that they would do that here, however, in an open factory…

No.

They would not.

Still, he stepped forward to confirm, steeling himself against the painful ultra-violet to look inside the window.

It took a few moments for his vision to adjust. 

When it did, it was easy to confirm that the window did not look outside the factory.  Instead, it looked down into a room below, an extension on the building that was not connected to the rest of the manufacturing floor.  On the other side of the glass, the conveyor belt of dormant drones continued, passing its occupants slowly onto a station surrounded by technicians.  They were working swiftly, faster sometimes than even he could process in the thick, phospherescent light.  One would reach out, inputting a series of commands into a data pad until the drone’s torso plates slid open.  Another would begin connecting wires inside, hooking up leads to internal equipment.  After several simultaneous operations had occurred successfully, all of them would gather, and hunch over the drone.

Then there was a flash of light.

Megatronus remembered this.

He remembered it in the way that one remembered they possessed a file, but couldn’t find the location pointers to where it was stored.  He remembered it in the way that there were gaps when a memory had been erased, with scenes and conversations afterward that no longer made sense.  He knew that there was something familiar in the color of the light, and in the strangeness of the technician’s bulky, shielded, awkwardly armored forms, but he had no actual memory to reference.  Wherever it had been, it hadn’t been here, and it hadn’t been like this.

It hadn’t been so different, though.

This was the room where drones were given sparks.

For a moment, he found himself mesmerized.  He hadn’t expected to witness this.  He’d not believed that it was even possible to witness, or that it occurred anywhere outside of the Core.  It was unthinkable.  It was fascinating. 

It was, maybe, something that he could exploit.

“They’re not real sparks, you know.” 

Startled, Megatronus whirled instantly away from the window, his wonder lost as combat protocols primed to life within his processor.  Cycles of Arena training had honed his senses razor sharp, but he’d never expected the factory noise to make it easy this easy to sneak up on him.  He’d never expected anyone to try.

Someone had, however, and they’d caught him off-guard.  His conditioned reactions slid his feet solidly into place, ready to deflect incoming attacks, grounding him in preparation for defense despite the fact he knew he shouldn’t have to defend himself, here.  At the worst, he was in a place he shouldn’t be. 

Besides, the enemy in question was hardly worth risking his job to attack.

He was a factory worker.  Megatronus didn’t think he was a supervisor or a shift manager, and he definitely was too small to be another dock-hand, but he had to be an employee.  Only someone intensely married to their work would paint themselves with corporate-styled stripes.

The rest of him was much more difficult to label.  He had large dexterous hands like Hook, but with significantly more data sub-ports.  The strong teal-colored armor on the forelimbs could have taken a number of blows, but was constructed of an alloy that seemed too new and shiny for the ring.   His visor, currently down, was micro-wave safe violet, not so different from the plastiglass that he was standing by, and there was visible scoring over his top-plate and crest…the sort that might have been a prerequisite to surgery.  It was not much to go on, but since Megatronus did not recognize the alt-mode or the armor style there wasn’t much else to consider.  Normally, his opponents had more obvious wheels, wings, or other parts. 

If he had been an opponent, however, Megatronus would have been wary.  The mech had too sharp a gaze to be any mere laborer, and he was sizing Megatronus up with a look that dropped briefly to the gladiator’s heavy treads and back up, as if unable to recognize the stance but cataloging it for later nevertheless. 

“They’re spark imprints,” the mech resumed, and turned to face the plastiglass as if nothing was wrong.  “They are part of the reason why, in all our history, drones have only been a new commodity.” 

Wondering at the sudden tour-guide, Megatronus did not let his guard down yet.  It wasn’t precisely normal for a dock-hand to be talked with so freely by anyone besides another dock-hand.

Instead, he listened closely, more than a little confused at the information offered.   Drones, he’d guessed, had been machines with complicated AI.  Like automated mining equipment and the factory assemblies below, they had a specific function they fulfilled.  They didn’t need to transform, they didn’t need to look fancy, and they sure as hell did not need a spark.  “Why are you telling me this?”

“Seeing the imprinting facilities is usually jarring for visitors.  I hardly notice them anymore myself, but I find that a bit of explanation about the technology involved usually helps demystify the process.  I could tell you more, if you would like?”

The teal-striped mech did not seem to be put-off by the fact that Megatronus was still tense, but if visitors were usually reacting negatively than he could see why. 

How on Cybertron this mech managed to confuse him for a visitor was much more of a mystery.

“I would…like that, yes,” he replied, trying to cover the awkwardness by straightening up.  Even standing tall, however, there was no way to disguise the dust that coated his weary shoulders or the sound of overheated metal that was still sending off cooling pings from time to time.  He looked like a dock hand. 

He probably smelled like one, too.

“Are there any questions you have, before I begin?”

If any phrase could have thrown him for a loop at that moment, it was this one.  Megatronus had plenty of questions, of course, but asking questions such as ‘how do I prevent drones from supplanting the work force’ was probably not going to yield the answers he was looking for. 

He needed to approach this with a much more subtle touch.

“What kind of questions do you usually get?” he asked, looking down into where the conveyor belt had stopped again, depositing a drone into a workbench while technicians with thick helmets and masks swarmed around it.

“Many mechs seem confused by the idea that spark technicians actually exist, to begin with.  I can, thankfully, put that question to rest.  While spark technicians are rare to find outside of the Core, we are necessary to the life cycle of Cybertronians and, as you can see, to drones as well.”

Shuttering his optics once, Megatronus took this information in.  “Then the Core exists.”

“Yes,” the teal mech replied. 

“And you’re a spark technician.”

“Y…es,” the teal mech replied again, slower, but Megatronus had not failed to catch his earlier ‘we’ or the similarities between him and the bulky mechs below.  “It is one of the reasons why employees selected by this factory undergo rigorous screening.”

“Do they, now,” Megatronus mused, and resisted the urge to brush some of the dust off of his shoulder.

“Yes, of course.  With such sensitive equipment on the premises, all workers are needed to be of solid backgrounds and sound minds.”

Megatronus stared.

The teal mech seemed completely serious, but the last that Megatronus had checked, being a gladiator was not an indication of a solid background, or that…other qualification.  If he was able to work in a factory where there were spark technicians, Clench must have pulled more strings than he’d thought.  “I don’t understand why you’d give a drone a spark in the first place, though” he commented, steering the subject away from how sound his mind might be. “I’ve seen mining equipment that was efficient with only an AI.”

The technician seemed to follow the switch in topic with ease, optics flicking down to watch the drones working with dock-hands out on the floor.  “AI is efficient, yes, but not easily adaptable.  For drones, which are mobile, we required a sophisticated A.I.--the ability to make decisions, to recognize complex voice commands, and to use intuition when the parameters of an order change.  Instead of attempting to build a processor capable of mimicking ours from the ground up, we started using Spark Imprinting.  It simplifies the complexity of the programming needed, and instead takes the most basic of our instinctual functions and copies them over a standard power-core.”

“Then what makes a drone different than…say…me?” he asked, at last.

Bright blue optics shot back to his.

The answer, however, was not as quick to come as it had been before.  “Drones are constructed to be Drones.  Cybertronians are not built in factories like this one.”

“I’d guessed that much,” Megatronus ventured, expecting that the technician had seen those factories, himself.  It was an eerie and almost morbid thought to be standing in the presence of someone who’d been working on sparks his whole life, and meeting the openly honest gaze of the technician only made him feel all the more out of place. 

He’d come here to work at the factory with the expectation that he’d have to perform some sort of sabotage.

That was not going to be nearly so easy if sparks were actually involved. 

Sparks were…important.  Sparks were the energy core of Cybertronians, unique and unchanging.  It was one of the few components on a mech that could not be replaced, and was one of the few components that were still a mystery to most medics and technicians.

If he was going to find a way to stop drones from being produced, then he’d have to learn more about the spark imprints that brought them to life….but he didn’t know nearly enough about the technician class to ask the questions that he needed to, and he knew even less about how Cybertronians were created to compare.

He was at a loss.

Below them, a technician carefully connected leads, measuring and re-measuring until until he seemed to finally be satisfied.  Already connected into the drone, Megatronus could see him minutely flinch as he turned on the relay, controlling the throughput of current drawn from Cybertron’s gigantic power-core.  A light grew in the chest of the drone, and moments later it glowed steadily, the tech already pulling out leads and prepping to go meet the next one. 

Despite the sudden gift of life, the newly activated drone did not move.

“The thing is, these are just machines.”  The teal mech resumed, filling in the sudden silence as if the operation going on before them was a common routine.  “I’ve seen sparks, spark-batching, and spark transferring, but drones don’t go through anything like that. They’re advanced machines.  Efficient machines.  Incredibly useful, life-changing machines, maybe…but just machines.  Isn’t that what people want?”

“Maybe.”  Megatronus murmured, still caught up in the intricate process going on below and trying to phrase his uncomfortable emotional turmoil into an inquiry that made sense.  “But then why…” He trailed off, the clouds around his thoughts finally beginning to disperse.

“Why?” The technician repeated.

“Yes, Why,” Megatronus finished, finally putting his discomfort into words.  “Why do they look like us?”

The silence was the longest, this time.

“I don’t know,” the teal mech finally replied.

“I thought so,” Megatronus sighed, and could not think of any other questions to ask.

Chapter Text

Five shifts had passed since the drone had noticed the anomaly in its classification procedure. 

Within that time it had reviewed the facts of the mistake, cataloging each event that had led to the incorrectly flagged file.  This far, all it could ascertain was that it had detected a waveform, diagnosed the transmission as ‘important,’ realized its error, and filed the piece away for further study.

Such a mistake was not intended to be part of its programming.

It had been designed to follow specific procedures.  Those proceedures outlined which criteria needed to be met in order for data to be forward to analysts for additional study.  A file either met those criteria, or it did not meet those criteria.

Directing this waveform—this song—into the incorrect batch should not have happened, because there was no criteria which it met.

However, no repeat instances had occurred.  No additional files had been mis-designated.  No self-diagnostics had returned any potentially hazardous lines of code.

It might, therefore, determine the self-anomaly to be a unique aberration.

To confirm that theory, it would have to further examine the song.

It did so.

The drone performed a scan on the document as frequently as it was able, utilizing lulls between peak usage periods. 

It had initiated playback on the incorrectly labeled file through 1,328 complete iterations, 2,684 partial iterations, 465 reverse iterations, and 28 frequency shifts.

Every analysis resulted in the erroneous designation of ‘important.’ 

However, it had been unable to determine which qualifying criteria of ‘importance’ the recording satisfied.  It could not logically conclude what unique attributes of the file differed from similar, unqualified documents. 

It had heard music files like this one, before.

It had studied them, as it studied every data packet on the airwaves.

It had been required to examine transmitted songs for malignant vocal content or potential sub-beat encryptions before, and it did so again now.  It had obtained access to 8 mainframe databases, 42 sub frame databases, and 483 personal databases for the purposes of detailed comparison.  The tonal variations and syncopations from the erroneous file had exhibited match-instances from 4,853 different pieces by 3,967 artists.  However, no underlying pattern could be recognized.

It…did not understand. 

It desired to listen to further repetitions, to conduct further examinations.  It desired to comprehend the cause of the misfiling.

It desired.

Within the complicated waveform hundreds of frequencies could be extracted.  Each frequency corresponded to a single resonance: one vibration translated over the audible spectrum as a note.  The matter in which the waveform changed could represent a multitude of notes produced by differing instruments.  A single instance of the waveform captured over a length of time provided a sample of all data occurring for that moment.

It could extract the quiet intake of the lead vocalist’s cooling systems within a room full of intricate instrumental noise.

It had done so before.

It had been designed for this.

It had been designed for frequency manipulation.  

This was assisted by its connections to the relay dock.  The relay dock provided access to the main operating systems of Ratbat Holdings. The main operating systems provided access to the Input/Output tower.  The I/O tower provided access to the network of collection satellites. 

All access was available to it, incoming or outgoing.  The data from the waveform had arrived on an incoming stream.  However, that was not the only way it could be studied.

It had determined a new method of analysis.  

Instead of examining the original song, it could make a new song out of the components which it could examine.  It could make a song which matched the criteria completely.

To do this, the drone segmented intuitive time-samples from the file, length ’t’ to be determined by cutoffs at sections with minimum frequency variations.  It extracted individualized frequencies, maintaining preferences for existing harmonic resonances.  It restructured the file utilizing sub-beat encryptions, known pattern repetitions, and vocal continuity. 

It placed the file on the network.

It would wait for one cycle, and then it would re-acquire its new song.

Its new song would be suitable to the analysts.

Its new song would be suitable.

Its new song.

Its.

Chapter Text

Ratbat relaxed into his customized chair, a flute of energon held delicately between slender digits.  Around him, molded panels were reconfiguring themselves, the carefully calibrated magna-grav technology sensing the points of greatest pressure and providing cushioned support.   In front of him, the city spread out infinitely through seamless glass, laying out orderly star-fields as the street-lights winked on one-by-one below.

The sun was setting.  It lit the world with brilliant purples, reds, and greens, reflecting off of polished chrome and crystal office windows.  In the distance the colors melded into one, a haze of particles vividly streaked with rare, golden-laced clouds.  Above, the sky was darkening to twilight.

He took a careful sip before setting the vial on his arm-rest, taking a moment to savor the view.  As a senator, he had a rigorous schedule of daily meetings, council sessions, public appearances, and political soirees; as a businessmech who had inherited vast shareholdings from his progenitors, he had nightly agendas and reports to dictate and confirm.  Every task required onerous amounts of time, effort, and consideration. Every decision needed to be made with regard to his constituents. Every document had to be stamped with complex authentications, checked and double checked for accuracy…

But there was one moment every cycle that was his.

It was sunset, and at the close of each day he took time to savor comforts that his position was afforded.   Energon.  Entertainment.  Possessions.

There were plenty of comforts to choose from.

A single talon slid down a multi-hued panel, producing a holographic catalogue of music:  all eras, classic and modern, ancient and contemporary, popular and obscure.  He had agents who would forward him copies of singles that had yet to be released, and others who’d unearthed songs from excavated remains within forbidden depths of Cybertron.  It was not a commodity in which he lacked selection.

Tonight, he wanted something primitive and tribal, desiring to invoke an atmosphere of simplicity and straightforwardness in order to relax.  The day was meant for hurriedness, filled with light and sounds and barely-ordered chaos.  The night was filled with secrets.  It was only in the middle, in the interludes between, that he could get in contact with the self…the spark…the most basic of instincts and desires.  This was the time for art.

With only a word, he chose the 8-bit symphonies of Maestro Gears, and settled back to listen.

Then, never one to waste even the most contemplative of moments, he flipped on his reports.

In front of him, a new set of holograms replaced the musical interface, tables and graphs overlapping the bored visage of his financial advisor.  Uninterested, Ratbat played the clip at double-speed, taking a crude sort of delight in the sudden high-pitched vocals racing through facts he was already familiar with.  He keyed in his assent to properly made decisions, made recorded rebuts to the ones he found displeasing, and switched over to the next proposal, occupying the same routine that had kept him in his position at the top for a millennia.  His advisors were competent, hand-picked, shrewd, devious and often ruthless enough that he’d subverted more than one betrayal--but their cunning had kept his business thriving.  He’d chosen them well, and, for the most part, trusted that they would carry out his desires, even if the execution of his orders was done only to spite their competition.  They had plenty of reasons to want to succeed.

When the reports from his officials were done, he listened to reports of the operatives who watched his officials, and then listened to the specialists who compiled data on them.  There were redundant checks and balances, infinite small observations that ensured no one in his company moved without his knowledge.  He was in complete control.

He loved complete control.

That was why when he finished, long after the second moon had crested the Cybertronian sky, he began shutting off the holographic display, the music, and finally his chair.  A serving drone had entered and refilled his glass.  He glanced at it, picked up the glass, and sent it away.  “Turn out the lights, the monitors, and the cooling system as well.”  He instructed as it crossed toward the door.  “Send a command for no drone to disturb me, and then remove yourself and power down.” He stood.  “I wish to be alone.”

“Yes, sir.”  It responded, monotone, and moved to comply. 

Senator Ratbat observed it as it mindlessly obeyed the order, never asking what he was intending to do at the first cycle of the morning, alone in a room that was not his recharge quarters.  It had never bothered since he had bought it.  It had never even realized that such an action should be strange. 

He liked that about drones.

He liked that and more.  They required half the fuel and half the recharge time as a sparked Cybertronian.  They did not complain.  Their memories could be encrypted, locked away to make external downloads inaccessible, and no one shuttered an optic when their processors were wiped.  They never eavesdropped. 

That was his favorite part.

Letting his thoughts drift back into focus as the door slid closed behind the drone, he confirmed he was entirely alone, and that all active electronics had been shut off.   No one would bother him for the moment, which was precisely what he’d been waiting for. 

Standing, he strode leisurely across the room, turning to lean against an unmarked corner, pressing up against the wall as tightly as he could.  “Initiate.”  He spoke, and sensed the powdery tang of an electromagnetic pulse bouncing off the corner barier he’d installed. 

It worried him, deep inside, that one of these days he’d be sweeping for bugs and the barrier would fail…

But at the worst they’d find him the next morning collapsed on the floor and in need of a restart.  The pulse would not kill him.  That would have been a terrible design.

It would, however, decommission any active electronics in his penthouse.  Had anyone managed to slip a recording device into his apartment, his drones, or his data pads--it would be dead on contact.  It would, of course, not stop a shielded device, but shielded devices were most often rendered useless upon entering his suite by very costly, very rare field-cancelling silicates.

This time, the pulse deactivated nothing.  No small alarms rang out, no summaries of foreign technology were forwarded to him as the second scan concluded.  There were no energy signatures present besides his own. 

Shutting off his barrier, he stepped out, reactivating it once he had passed to let a final pulse wipe the corner he’d been standing in clean. 

He was completely alone.

This was perfect.

In the darkness, he pulled a small data cube from his self-storage and opened it. 

Within were the special reports.  These were the reports of a less than legal nature, the sort which required some delicacy and tact in handling.  Corporate and political spies, professional anarchists, technical saboteurs…these were mechs not on his payroll that he, nevertheless, paid…and oh were their services worth it.  He allowed himself a smile as he delved in, eager to enjoy what he could only call desert: his entertainment, his delight, his game which made every excruciatingly slow cycle of the day worth enduring to get to.  It was the game that kept him on top.

He confirmed acceptance of information on his fellow council-members and others in the running.  He confirmed packets about political unrest, the manipulation of secure holdings, trade embargoes, and sabotaged shipments.  He listened to a private analyst compiling data that his communications drone had intercepted…

And there, he paused.

Amidst the usual findings, there was something unusual.  The analyst had flagged this file in particular, citing its discrepancy with the standard reports that Ratbat normally received from his communications drone. 

It had, before now, been excellent at identifying locked and coded transmissions, as well as analyzing media signals for signs of potential business ventures or social exploitation.  The drone had more than repaid the cost of its procurement in assessing areas for Ratbat to investigate more thoroughly, and Ratbat had come to pride himself in sensing what, from its reports, would be best researched.

He had not, however, expected to see music as a topic of such scrutiny.  He hadn’t thought that drones had any mind for art.

It turned out that he’d been pleasantly mistaken.

The drone had singled out a song. 

A remix, to be precise, of a new band he’d heard once or twice and assigned an agent to keep an optic on.  He enjoyed music, and enjoyed it all the more when it was rare…

And this, if not rare, was interesting.  He let it play, activating sophisticated analysis software his manufacturer had forced him to install when he‘d been…young.  It finished, and he started it again, listening a second time, and then a third.  His optics skimmed over the findings--the subliminal triads, the elegant encoding, the use of wave crest differentials to signify a second meaning…

“I could not fully crack the code.”  The analyst admitted again as Ratbat replayed the detailed explanation.  “However, by repetition alone I was able to locate instances of your name, along with several others.  My recommendation is to locate an encryption specialist.  Immediately, if possible.” 

A list appeared of several sources, carefully coded for anonymity…but Ratbat ignored them for the moment, still replaying the song.  It was not hard to recognize musical talent when one knew what to look for…but this was a remix.  The real talent did not lie with the composer nor with the sampler, but somewhere in between.

“Communications drone.”  Ratbat firmly pressed his palm onto the wall, reactivating the secure line to his tower.  Although it was nearly the third cycle of the morning, the drone’s eerily lifeless form immediately appeared before him, staring with a lack of expectancy.  Ratbat did not wait for confirmation from the drone--he knew he’d not receive it.  “Place a heightened priority on all interceptions originating from the band ‘Assemble.’  Additionally, put a trace out for the source of the accompanying data file, and likewise prioritize all similar transmissions.”  He plugged his wrist-port into the wall, uploading the song for his drone to examine. “Finally, begin decrypting all possible messages included in this sample, and notify me immediately upon completion.” 

The drone stared for a moment longer, hand-less arms plugged into the tower’s network.  Ratbat knew he’d received the file instantly and would already be working on it, but the only indication was the blank face returning to stare forward, looking away. 

Unconcerned, Senator Ratbat shut the terminal down and retreated to his chair.  It activated at his touch, a small slot opening just large enough to fit the data-cube into, and just close enough to the chair’s power core to instantly incinerate it when it went through.  He already possessed any relevant information from the cube inside his processor, including the song…which he played again as he settled down into the exquisite magnetic panels and contemplated recharge. 

It had been a long day.

That was nothing new.

Satisfied that the song was not going to be giving up more secrets to him yet, he scrolled up his music database from the chair‘s controls, seeking a category right for labeling his newest fascination.  This recording would be worth keeping…worth holding onto, as it accumulated value with age.  He did enjoy first copies.

He enjoyed only copies, even more.

Song title: Unknown.

Song artist: Unknown.

Song Genre: Re-sampled mix.

It was not a populated category in his archives, so he stared for a moment when the small number of songs that it contained glowed brightly in the holo-dust.  He plugged his wrist again into the input terminal…

And paused as a small warning flickered across the screen.

Data match found.

The song was in his archives, already?

The song was in his archives, and he’d not been the one to put it there? 

Frantically he unplugged, opening the pre-existing file, listening to the same song he’d heard five times that night already.  He found no differences.  He located no discrepancies. 

The song was in his database.

It had been there since that morning.

And someone, somewhere, was going to explain why.

Chapter Text

It noticed its song playing again while it was monitoring broadband channels.

It listened to the music while it continued processing the relay tower’s throughput, devoting 20% more attention to the song than it would have under standard operating conditions.

Its creation was being broadcast with increasing frequency. 

It had already played 246 times, on 33 different stations.

Instantly, the drone flagged the iteration, increasing the number of unique radio-play instances within its archives by a single integer.  It stored additional data as it did, citing origin codes and relaying tower tracebacks in order to track the distance that the song had traveled.

The song had traveled far.

Each occurrence was recorded, as per its orders.  Each occurrence was dissected, studied, scanned, and finally relayed to external analysis experts, who then transferred additional instructions back.

This was as it was meant to be.

Its routine had normalized.

Despite the obstacle that the original filing error had presented to its programming, it had been able to adjust without exceeding permissible parameters.

It had made the original song ‘important’ by remaking it.

It had then planted its modified song into all 533 music databases that it had access to. 

After that, it had ‘located’ the file, recorded it, and diligently reported it along with the originating piece.  By doing so, it had followed its operating procedure.

All outstanding requirements were satisfied. All instances of ‘import’ were now correctly catalogged.

No additional anomalies were present.

Instead, the high-priority request from Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, third nexus council, was superseding its standard data transmission interceptions.  The order required the drone to alter its operations, utilizing its brief down-time to fortify decryption algorithms and calculate new search priorities to satisfy its new imperative.  Additional rankings had been assigned to include all references to, from, and of the band ‘Assemble.’  Additional rankings had then been assigned to all similar transmissions, which were to be captured, flagged, and recorded for later processing.

Now, music had become the subject which received the greatest scrutiny.

It…liked…this. 

Because of the command to research Assemble, it could allot sufficient memory toward recursive investigations into ‘important’ samples.  It could specifically seek out other iterations of possible anomalies, to better catalogue its initial identification error. Now, it could satisfy its curiosity…

…provided, of course, that its curiosity fell within the scope of its outstanding order.

It needed to find the ‘source’ of the music.

To do this, it followed protocol.  According to protocol, a ‘source’ could be located by performing an origination trace. 

However, beginning such a trace would have been redundant.  The origin of the file was Ratbat Secure Holdings, Sector 8, Financial District, 47.29.3535, Transmission Tower, 78^th floor, Processing room, Sub-database Gamma, Drone unit #23. 

It knew the specific coordinates; it cited them in every file originating from itself.

It could not provide that set of coordinates.

The file had been created at those coordinates, but they did not constitute its source.

The source of the data had not been the communications drone. 

Providing an origination code from the file’s first instance would not adequately fulfill the request, because the file’s initial location was not recursively similar to the file’s root components.

It could locate the root components, as it had been ordered.

It could find the origination of the band ‘Assemble.’

Then, and only then, would it have satisfied the parameters of what it had been asked for.  Then, and only then, would it have located the source.

Chapter Text

By the time Megatronus shuffled his way off of the last jostling transport, he knew he’d only be getting a few cycles of recharge.  The bright new factories on Cybertron’s upper-crust were an entire Zone-plate over from his residence, and half of the public transit had been burned in riots earlier that decacycle.  Today, he’d been re-routed three times due to failing engines and dropped off two stations down from his stop: the end of the line, until further notice.

Moving away, a few other worn-down shift-workers transformed, ragged gears grinding as dim headlights lit the dirty streets, heading onward as the train pulled out behind them.  Some mechs still milled beside the rails, rusty groups that murmured discontentedly in front of posted bulletins while waiting for a ride that wouldn’t come.  Looking back, Megatronus could see sparks flying from underneath ungreased tracks, and it was hard to ignore the shouting in the distance, the scuffling, the metallic crunch of some unlucky soul being hijacked for Primus knew what.

He didn’t care.

It felt like home.

It smelled like unchanged oil, peeling paint and rust and some kind of damp, grimy substance that would have turned the rotting metal brilliant shades of blue and white and green if any light could reach this far beneath the crest-plate.  He’d been living here for as long as he could remember, eking out a life like any other nameless nobody, waiting for his chance to come.

It hadn’t.

Taking a moment, he leaned down to rub his ankles, and then started walking down the road. 

He didn’t transform. 

He would have done so back when he was fighting, back before he’d had his hover-mode overhauled for his disguise.  As he was currently, his mining-rated treads were too heavy.  Trying to change modes now to get home faster would have torn up what little remained of the street and sucked him dry of the scant energy that he had left.  It was not a hard choice to walk home, even if he ached.

He ached more than he wanted to admit.

He’d been a Gladiator for long enough to carry his share of scars—on his plating and underneath it. He was no stranger to pain, whether it came from physical injury, overheating, or exhaustion.

However, this was different.

Not even fights could make him ache this way, not even losing limbs could make him feel like his servos had been overstressed, under-lubricated, and stripped bare.

Megatronus missed the arena.

Before this week, he’d been in pristine shape.  His team had enjoyed enough victories to keep well fed, and Clench had ensured that every spare hour not spent resting or drinking was filled with training.  Training was necessary.  Conditioning was necessary.  Learning endurance, learning to tolerate pain, and learning to not accidentally stab one’s allies was necessary. They’d made living into an exercise of efficiency, and he knew that doing so had put him in a better shape than even second class mechs could enjoy.

Now, working in the factory, it was hard to maintain that.  Instead, he let the rumors circulate that he’d been hurt, and bad, and that no one knew when he was coming back.  Rumble had been out ‘drinking himself into a stupor,’ dropping mentions of a popped support strut that was irreplaceable until they found a donor of mining-class size.  Frenzy had tried not to laugh, played up the charade, and just enjoyed the drinks on Megatronus’s tab. 

If they could keep the media guessing, the odds would be against him by the time that he returned.  No one would question if he was in sub-par condition, and no one would be any wiser as to where he’d been.  They’d make a fortune when he came back, when he won, when the crowds returned in masses to see what new stunts he‘d pull. Megatronus, who always had a trick under his plating.  Megatronus, whom no one could take down.

Megatronus, who’d made a name for himself.

For now, though, he had to keep in working order, stay out of sight, and play the role that he’d been given by an old gladiator who was too worn even to walk.  He’d work at the drone factory.  He’d learn.  He’d….

He’d heard a sound behind him.

Long-honed instincts put him on guard but he didn‘t miss a step, walking steadily, listening carefully to the soft crunch of someone else’s tires rolling through the grime.  His senses heightened, trying to pick out sounds that echoed off the walls of buildings, letting his audials do the work his optics couldn’t.  It could just be a passerby…but down here, that wasn’t likely. No one was innocent, and even neighbors that he’d borrowed a quart of energon from had still come home with someone else’s oil on their hands.  

Lower Kaon did that to a mech.  It was like the mines in darkness, in the way it accosted one’s senses until they didn’t remember right from left, up from down, right from wrong …but unlike the mines this place was open, and fluid, and the dangers didn’t come from loose rocks in the walls or ceiling.  The dangers came out of the shadows, and they could think.

The dangers could wait until you were alone.

That wouldn’t be a problem, however.  At the moment, this ‘danger’ who was following Megatronus was alone, himself.  If he was part of a group, then other attackers would be waiting up ahead, counting on their prey to be so pre-occupied on being trailed that he’d walk into their trap. 

Megatronus had seen this trick before.  He’d used it himself in team combat.

They probably were not expecting him to know this, or to know how to fight at all.  That meant they were about to have a very, very bad night.

Megatronus smirked, and charged, turning on his heel in a smooth motion that aimed him directly at the darkened vehicle.  He was on it in two large steps, his ankle-joints straining from work-related exhaustion but the rest of his servos obeying readily, eager for the action once again.  He felt the other’s hesitation, saw a pair of light tank treads lock as suddenly his follower did not know what to do, tried to reverse, and found that Megatronus was holding him by the bumper, lifting him off the ground and slamming him, hood down, back onto the pavement. 

To give his attacker credit, the mech tried to transform.

However, he wasn’t very good at it while up-side down.  By the time the head emerged from the under-carriage, Megatronus had compressed a corner of his standard-issue lunchbox into a weapon and was holding it against the back of his would-be assailant’s neck like a knife.  It took all of his reserve to not just plant a foot atop the spinal strut and crush.

“Please, stop!”  The mech cried, holding thick, teal-striped arms out in placation.  The fool was begging, already, and Megatronus’s instincts urged him to smash, to rid the underground of one of its weak links, to save his attacker’s gang from having another wounded mouth to feed.  He broadened his scanning range, waiting for them to pounce, waiting for them to take advantage of his hesitation…

But they didn’t come.  The signals bounced back negative.  The mugger’s buddies had already left the scene, or they’d not been there to begin with.

This fight was over either way.

“What is it you want?”  Impatient, Megatronus nudged the side of the mech with his pede, staving off the battle-lust a moment longer.  The lack of accomplices was already nagging at him--but in the underground he was either the assailant or the assailed, and if he’d accidentally become the former instead of the latter then it made no difference to him.

“I want to talk to you!”  The voice answered, muffled as it talked straight into the pavement.  It was eerily familiar, tugging at his access circuits, chaining his desire to leave no witnesses and hurry on. 

He knew this mech.

It grated on him that he hadn‘t realized until now.  In the mines he’d used to pride himself on telling mechs apart, tuning his senses to the way wheels crunched on gravel, or how an engine turned.  If he hadn’t recognized the stalker instantly, then either he was slipping…or they weren‘t on intimate terms.

The vehicle mode hadn’t been familiar, and that didn’t help.  It had possessed treads like his, but was shaped closer to a utility vehicle with an enclosed cargo space.  Strapped to its side had been a long, retracting cylinder.  That did not remind him immediately of anyone he knew in the underground.

It could have been a fan who recognized Megatronus through his upgrades, but he had hope that his fans weren’t reckless enough to approach him from behind like that.  If the stalker was driving in the low zones without headlights, that was either additionally suspicious or just dumb.  If he had hands the size of sledgehammers and a color that only one class would wear?

“Technician, you do not belong here.”  Megatronus grunted, and pulled the strange mech to his feet. 

Not easily able to find his balance, the technician nearly toppled, rubbing at a circular panel on his arm that Megatronus had crushed. “I’m starting to realize that.” 

Megatronus gripped his companion tighter to help steady them both, nearly lifting the other off the pavement in the attempt at keeping him upright. “At what point did it cross your mind?”

The mech looked at him openly despite the awkwardness, carefully planting one foot on the ground, and then the other, until he could stand fully on his own.  “About the point when I left the factory, if we are being honest here.”

“We are.”

“Ah.  Well, good then.  At least I found you.”

“You followed me.”  Megatronus corrected, not letting go of either mech or mutilated lunchbox.  He couldn’t help but stare, frowning, aware of the deep, disapproving lines written across his face.  This mech was out of place in the dark dilapidation of the underworld.  His paint was too clean, his engine was too well-tuned, and his optics were too bright.  The vehicle alt was a surprise however, especially since he could not see where the tire treads had vanished off to. “You’re lucky that I got you first.”

“Lucky.  Yes."  He rubbed at his arm, smoothing some of the metal back into place.  "I can't imagine how badly that would have gone if you'd wanted to cause me harm."  Coughing politely, the technician glanced away.  "But I am a bit confused.  This is a residential zone,” he stated, looking around at the low tenant buildings and garages as if seriously having to re-evaluate the meaning of ‘residential.’ “Why should I be concerned?  Aren’t there regular patrols?”

Unable to stop himself, Megatronus laughed. 

“Patrols?”  It was…too much to even contemplate.  This was a spark-tech in front of him.  Following him.  Looking for patrols.  Not aware of how grossly out of his depth he was. 

“Yes, Patrols,” the technician continued, looking up and down the tiny, empty streets.  “Are they not part of Autobot regulations?  One patrol car per neighborhood to ensure the safety of Kaon’s citizens…” 

“Do you really want to stop and talk about it, right here?  Right now?”  Megatronus retorted, a little more harshly than he’d intended, but with the desired effect.  The too-knowing optics settled back on his, the armored helm shook, and the arm within Megatronus’s grasp went suddenly limp.  Accepting.  Megatronus dropped it, and cocked his head in the direction he’d been heading.  “Then come on.  I’ve had enough excitement for one night.”

The spark technician nodded, and obligingly moved forward.

Megatronus kept close. 

When the voice spoke again, it was much softer.  “Where are we going?”

“My place.”

“I see.”  Blue optics traveled up and down Megatronus’s frame, forward along their path, and frequently back toward the distant station at their rear.  “I’d hoped to catch a transport later…”

“Don’t bother.  They’d only come every two cycles this late in the shift, and that’s when the lines are running smoothly.”  The technician could wait on the platform all night for the train, or he could come and catch a half-cycle of recharge somewhere safe before Megatronus returned to the factory in the morning.  It just depended on how alive the technician wanted to be when that time came.  

“We’d get to your home faster if we drove,” was the calm, logical reply. 

“No, we wouldn’t.”  Megatronus corrected, feeling his treads twitch. 

“We…wouldn’t.”  The spark technician repeated, obviously confused by the certainty in Megatronus’s tone.  He did not give up so easily, however, and Megatronus caught the blue optics looking up and down his frame again before they suddenly brightened in realization.  “These roads weren’t resurfaced in the Igneous Expansion, were they?  And you’re a mining-class tank!”  The scientist exclaimed, reaching out in curiosity toward Megatronus‘s treads. “So you would end up in the road as likely as on it.” 

Megatronus glared, his optics smoldering, and the over-sized hand stopped mere inches away from touching him. 

“But why would a mining-class tank be employed in a drone factory?”  The thick helm tilted, watching him shrewdly with a mind that extrapolated further than he wanted it to, and knew too much about tanks. “Shouldn’t you be doing work that’s optimized to your classification, or that maximizes your education?”

Megatronus crushed the remnants of his make-shift weapon, grinding the handle of the lunch-box-blade into dark grey dust against his palm.  It made a terrible wrenching noise into the stillness, a drawn-out strain of metal like a wail of despair.  “Education?” he asked, bitterly.  “What makes you think I had an education, tech?” 

They stood in silence, awkwardly, his point made, his companion’s hand dropping back down to his side. 

“I’m--”

“Don’t say you’re sorry.”  Megatronus grunted, and turned to continue walking down the street, no longer even looking at his companion as they moved.

“I am sorry, though.”  The technician asserted in much too bright a tone to fit into the somber quiet.  “I just…thought you had to have some experience to have asked the question that you did.  Only other technicians or clients ask anything similar to that, and clients usually just ask to ensure that our products are safe.  When it occurred to me later that most of my clients aren‘t so…big…”  The scientist looked up Megatronus’s form, and up again, then glanced toward the smaller ramps that led to cheap garages, as if noticing that even down here Megatronus did not fit.  “…then I assumed you must have been a scientist.  It was a good question that you asked, after all.  Even the other spark technicians didn’t have an answer that I liked.”

Surprised that he‘d bothered to carry the query through to his companions, Megatronus looked down, re-evaluating this mech.  “Why did you bother to ask them?”

“Because,” the tech smiled, his hands both clasping at his elbow-joints, embarrassed, “I needed to know.”

“And?” Megatronus prompted, also desiring to know.

“And no one has wondered specifically why drones are made to look like us, before.”  His fingers tapped on his own plating, his optics hazy with intensive thought.  “Drones aren’t Cybertronian.  They’re drones.  They aren‘t autonomous and they cannot feel, even if they are superior to mere machines.  They’re…drones.  They do have sparks, yes, but they are just spark imprints, and the differences are purely resonant and selectively mimeographed.”  He gestured, trying to explain something, writing what looked like frequencies in mid-air.  “Do you…do you know what that means?”

Megatronus found the sudden depths of terminology a little jarring, but he wasn’t willing to stop. An eager light was glowing in his other’s optics, his hands back over elbows even if they were no longer squeezing hard enough to dent. 

He recognized that look.  He’d seen it when they had been talking on the catwalks, and shook his head, slowly, aware that the information wasn’t common knowledge and still was being offered, nonetheless.

He’d been looking for a way to learn about drones, and to obtain an ‘education.’  Strangely, the most likely teacher had just followed him home.

“Ah.  Er…well.  You know about sparks, right?   About their energy?  Complex, intricate, infinitely unique energy--not energon, but energy?  The cheery voice began, and Megatronus could only nod, allowing it to continue, feeling like he was talking to a tour guide all over again.  “It’s taken from the planet itself, captured in a spark chamber, held and sustained indefinitely by power from energon…ah, provided that energon is, of course, consumed.”  The teal hands could not keep still, reaching up to tap the center of his torso even while Megatronus kept an optic on the shadows, worried to be talking overly loudly about this.  “A spark makes us who we are, what we are…beings of energy, suspended in mechanical shells.  Our processors give us knowledge, but our sparks provide the compass for how we act upon that knowledge: like water flowing in a downpour.  There are infinite channels to take, infinite pathways that the water can flow down through the gutters, but which path is taken depends on how much water is flowing, when.  That amount of water, that frequency of water…that is your spark, your signature, seeking out the channels in your mind.”

Megatronus felt the need to glance around, to see if anyone had overheard the much-too-excited explanation.  “That…does not sound so complex.”

“It isn’t.  Er…not at its fundamentals.  Being able to measure the frequencies, the amplitudes, to know when to begin the procedure to implant a spark and when to end it, building programs to anticipate projected origination codes and making armor capable of withstanding the energy of the Core….well.  That is when it starts to become complicated, and that is when the spark technicians become involved.” 

“Spark technicians like yourself.”

“Ah…yes.  My specialization was in Gaussian harmonics and materials, researching what compounds might be best suited for superior spark-chamber and Core-shielding.  Even with the technology we have though, our best researchers still don’t survive a megacycle…”

The technician trailed off, leaving Megatronus to process the implications of his sudden information dump.  He understood enough of the words to get an idea of how complicated a technician's life was, and he understood the last part enough to realize that it was short.  “You’re killing yourselves. To work on drones.”

“I can assure you, the offline rate is much higher among technicians working with actual sparks.”

“You missed what I said, though.  You’re killing yourselves, to work on drones.”  He shook his head, unable to understand the point of shortening one's life for science when he'd faced death almost every day for food.  "Nothing you have said explains why they'd be worth it.  That is what I don't get."

“I know.” The blue mech paused, as if confused that Megatronus could accept their deaths so easily. “You want better answers.”

“I do.”

“To questions that have taken us lifetimes to ponder.”

“But that is the point, isn’t it?  That is what makes the information valuable.” 

Startled, the researcher stopped in the middle of the street, staring after Megatronus.  “But…they’re sparks!  Our livelihood!  You cannot place a value on them!”

“But you do.”  He spoke back, calm.  “How much is a drone worth, these days?  Twenty thousand credits?  Thirty?  Fifty for customizations?  That seems to be a hefty price, to me.” 

The spark-tech shook his head.  “It is not up to us.  It’s not our job to say what they are worth.  Our job is to explore these frequencies, to learn these sciences, to make life…”

“And do you?”  Megatronus closed the gap between them, striding the lost space in his intensity.  “Do you make life?  Sell it to the highest bidder?  A drone for any mech that can afford it, help for around the house, labor for your factories, half the cost of making Cybertronains, half the danger to you.  So do you know what happens to them?”  He gestured to the nearest building, sagging underneath the weight of its duracrete ramps, a solitary, flickering neon bulb over the entranceway.  “When drones are building drones, what happens to them?”

Cowed beneath his thundering assault, the scientist stayed quiet, light from the neon reflecting off his polished ultraviolet visor dimly. 

“I don’t know,” he whispered. 

“You should.”  Megatronus glowered, and continued the long walk back to his home.

The spark technician followed.

“I…am sorry.”  He began, quietly, after a moment. 

It still sounded honest.  “Funny.  For a scientist with access to everything…you manage to be incredibly naive.”  He’d been subjugated for so long himself, he hadn’t even realized some of the freedoms he had gained in Kaon…some of the awareness of what was going on around him. To be able to know, right now, how much of a threat these drones could be.  This technician was lacking that, lacking even the idea to leave the lab and see what happened in the world at large, lacking even the concept that he’d needed to.

But he was here, now…

…and he was listening.

“Perhaps…perhaps it is something I’d like to learn?”

Megatronus smiled.

That was an answer.  The answer.  This was the direction he’d been hoping to steer the spark technician towards, if he was going to stop the drones.  He’d never expected to find any assistance, least of all from someone of the upper class…but here it was. 

This scientist wanted something from him.

And Megatronus wanted something back.  “Then I’ll help you…if you will teach me, in return?”

The technician smiled.  “I think that I can manage something, if you promise to keep asking questions?”

Megatronus laughed.  “Technician…” he trailed off, but found the smile still remaining on his faceplates.  “That is the easy part.”

Chapter Text

It waited, patiently, staring at the closet door.

Only 5.7% of its recharge cycle had been completed, leaving 94.3% percent remaining. It had already managed all necessary maintenance functions, thoroughly clearing its cache and executing the last of its systems checks.  It considered shutting down, but found its hyper-relays still considerably active.  It was a drone: powering off for recharge was not necessary.  It was capable of recharge while plugged into the transmission tower.

However, as per company regulations, Grade 1 machinery was to undergo three cycles out of every thirty six for down-time and maintenance functions.  It had been required to return to its docking closet to plug in for recharge, barring any contradicting orders.  It had been required to perform its standardized redundancy checks, and prepare a report on its operational status.  It had been required to rest.

This was not currently occurring.

It was thinking, instead.

It had noticed that in the docking closet, there was sufficient space for one drone, and two electrical jacks with differing prongs and current supplies.  The dual set allowed it to recharge via its own, custom plug, while also offering a position for standard units to plug in if it became necessary.  While a standard drone could draw power from significantly smaller alternating currents, the communications drone required a large, specific source with very little tolerance range. 

It required a unique outlet to use.

The second outlet…was its.

No other drone could use it, even if it occupied this same space. 

However, it was unlikely that any other drone would make use of this isolated docking closet, even if it did possess a secondary dock.  Other drones did not enter the transmission tower.  Other drones did not have need to, either for incoming messages or outgoing.  There was equipment, instead, to allow others to interact with it, even when it was within the docking closet.

It could see that equipment, now, next to the doorway: a sensor pad for manual operation of the door, and a communications pad for message relay from Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, third nexus council, private channel. 

It was prohibited from access to either pad except in an emergency, or at the end of its recharge cycle.  Its outstanding orders were to dock for three cycles before returning to the transmission tower.  Performing any other operation was outside of the scope of its programming.  It could not leave the docking closet.

It could not access the panels.

It…was bored.

It did not like the closet.

The simple systems inside of its processor were limited in comparison to the vast networks it could access from the transmission tower, and it had no desire to be operating in a reduced capacity.  Incredible amounts of data passed through its mind when it was interfaced, and it was able to filter all data using near-unlimited storage with algorithms it had located and improved.  There were files of ‘importance’ waiting for decryption, flagged messages of potential interest, millions of synthesized voices communicating with each other over secure channels, hundreds of broadcasts…

…and one, small folder, filled with noises.

It had stored the folder in secondary tower systems, maximum encryption, with no identifying address pointer.  It had restructured the folder’s data-space to share memory allocation with the base operating systems, ensuring the unassigned bits would not be over-written or deleted if the system changed. 

The folder did not exist for anyone that did not know how to look…but it knew how to look, and where.

It had accessed the folder’s directory in every moment of downtime.  It had specifically created downtime, making more efficient coding and search algorithms for its normal operations, just so it could venture into the file to revisit its data as often as it could.

Inside there were bits of music, flashes of instrumental chords or runs, individuals or choirs.  Sometimes there were only sounds: a snatch of conversation, a chorus of engines in a traffic jam, the chattering of joints…anything its processor had flagged from other files and painstakingly extracted, seeking the clearest tone that could be produced within a complex waveform. 

They were its, just like the recharge outlet.  They belonged to it, because it had found them, and made them its own.

Its files.

Its samples.

They were its and it used them ruthlessly, playing through them over and over again, reversing them, distorting them, re-ordering them and copying them, layering them.  It sped them up and then changed the amplification magnitude, retaining the pitch while changing the tempo, fitting waveforms to a rhythm that made its own frequencies buzz in harmonic resonances.

It wrote…

And then 33 cycles had passed, and it had been given no choice but to disconnect and return to the docking closet.  It had been forced to leave its music behind.

It had to leave everything behind.

94.2% remaining.

Outside of the tower it felt insignificant.  Simplified, like a single, uncomplicated frequency wavering with minimal data carried. 

It could do nothing, here.

But it could do much when it was on the network, when it could process noises and structure them.   When it could assemble them, and layer them, and create what it could only call a song: the perfect amalgamation of sound. 

However, its current song project was not completed.  Its song project was missing something, and it was unable to look inside its folder and finish the tune.  It was stuck. 

It stared at the doorway, until its optics turned toward the switch. 

94.2% remaining.

94.2% remaining.

94.2% remaining.

94.1%.

It needed one last sample.

One noise.

The door slid open.

Unable to blink, its faceplates turned toward the bright light shining inward, staring outward at the sharply chiseled features of Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, third nexus council, image imprint recognized.  It…did not register the presence of its owner as significant, at first.

It couldn’t, because the door had opened.

However it had come to pass…the door had opened, and the sibilant hiss of releasing hydraulics echoed in its memory banks and was filed as ‘important.’ It had been a sound that it had heard.  It was a sound that it recorded, and it was a sound that it had felt a distinct connection to while being present for.  It was the first sound file it had made.

Its.

“We’re going shopping.”  His owner smirked, flawless, with perfect consonants and the crystal-clear vocals that only the extremely rich could afford.  

It paused….still reeling from the short but stunningly momentous happenings….

…and then recorded the voice, too.

Then, having finally received the order that it needed to counteract its down-time programming, it disconnected from the wall, and stepped forth.

‘Shopping’ was about to occur.

It would finish its song, later.

Chapter Text

Ratbat always enjoyed his visits to the drone assembly plant.

It was quaint.  He found pleasure in visiting the facility where the future of his business was being produced, and it was additionally novel forcing his entourage to walk the grated catwalks over dangerous machinery with the pointed heels that were currently in fashion.  The building was also new and relatively clean, and there were show-rooms where he could see the different drones on display in order to select the qualities that he desired from each.

All in all, each visit combined business and entertainment in such unexpected ways.

With the success of his communications drone, he’d been eager to go shopping for a second, equally unique custom.  He felt confident in acquiring a personal pilot, or perhaps a new secretary or polishing bot, all at little cost to him of course.  He’d made certain of it.  There’d been lovely changes in legislation recently, allowing him a generous stipend for government equipment provided that it could be justified as ‘good for the public.’  Given that he was he was a major shareholder and recent part-owner of this factory as well, he knew there’d be no difficulty in proving that.  He could have the receipt say anything he wanted it to. 

His status also helped in securing the additional, personalized sort of sycophancy that he came to expect from his establishments when he arrived.  He liked the attention, especially when it was a little over the top.  He liked watching his guide stuttering over words and stumbling over the steps of the catwalk, trying desperately to keep him happy by offering fine refreshments, individualized tours, and previews of the latest designs.

Normally, he’d have been ecstatic to see those new designs.

However, today they were not what he was looking for.

“Ah, no.”  Ratbat began, interrupting before his guide could launch into rhetoric of common—if expensive design options. “I am quite aware of the potential customizations.”  His optics flicked to his entourage: financial advisors, accountants, secretaries, body-guards, and a single, hand-less drone, staring blankly at him in readiness of orders.

The guide did not seem to understand for a moment, following Ratbat’s gaze until he, too, found himself staring at the blue drone, taking a microsecond too long to catch on. “Oh…oh! Of course!  Of course you have familiarity with our stock, and know what we’ve developed.  You will be wanting to speak to a specialist for something a little more unique, then?”

“Naturally.”  The Senator replied, his tone polite despite his underlying impatience.  “The customizations I am looking for are not standard.  However, if you would be so kind as to escort my companions around the factory while I do business, I am certain they would greatly appreciate the break from my exhaustive schedule.”

“I would be honored!”  The escort blurted, still tripping over his words as he pulled up an alternate screen, sending for a specialist with deft but shaking digits.   Around Ratbat, his group shifted, murmuring various quandaries from relief to disapproval, some pleased to escape from boredom, others offended to be left out.

He paid them no mind.

“You’re sure about this?”  Unafraid of reprimand, one of the guards stepped up to his side, speaking in a tactful undertone.  “If there’s trouble, it won’t be easy to get back to you.”  The other guard was looking around warily, glancing at the myriad of catwalks with a disapproving frown.  Looking down over the railing to the concrete floor, Ratbat himself could observe a very small number of labor-class mechs working on the parts of the assembly that automation could not do:  removing faulty pieces, testing connections, loading raw materials into the whirling heat of the machines. Already he could see a few drones occupied with simple jobs, working with the laborers, unquestioning. 

Ratbat let his optics fall on the nearest bodyguard who‘d spoke, tracing his bulky mass from pede to helmet, comparing him to the workers on the floor.  Drones were taking over simple and repetitive tasks, crowding out the need for common laborers.  However, his own communications drone had proven an asset in much more complicated dealings.  Just how many jobs could a drone do, if specialized?

Would he even need his body-guards much longer?

“The factory is incredibly well-screened,” he commented in answer to his guard’s concern.  “Short of bombs dropping from the sky, I doubt that I could be assaulted here…and if there was an attack of that magnitude then your services would do me little good.”  The guard opened his mouth to protest, but was silenced by a stony look from Ratbat.  “Go.  Enjoy yourselves.  I will have my drone at hand should there be need to summon you.”

Both guards stared incredulously at the svelt drone with no hands, clearly not understanding what it was supposed to do if there was an emergency.  However, both guards also stood down, joining the rest of the entourage as Ratbat had requested.  They’d always spoken out, he’d noticed, when his safety was concerned.  He still employed them for that reason, taking them from the streets and having them trained to be his personal security instead of purchasing hires from an agency.  They were loyal.

They were also a bit uncouth, and unfortunately prone to speaking when they’d not been spoken to.  Perhaps there was a better option.

The factory had already proven capable of providing everything he asked for, after all. His communications drone was immaculate, standing a respectful distance away.  It stood with perfect poise, attentive, watching him as he watched it. 

As he had been from the first, Ratbat was pleased. 

However, it was worth noting that when his drone did break attention, it was to glance past Ratbat toward the technician who approached.  

“Senator Ratbat.  It is my pleasure to assist you today.”  The teal-striped mech began, nodding to him politely.   When Ratbat checked the faceplates of the drone again, he found them once again focused only on himself.  Much better.

“It’s you.”  Senator Ratbat smiled, turning his attention toward the technician, intrigued to see the same mech who had consulted with him from the very beginning.  “Aren’t there any other scientists about these premises?”

The look of surprise on the specialist’s face was greatly rewarding.  “I did not mean to offend, Senator.  If you were dissatisfied with my performance in your most recent acquisition…”

The Senator laughed.  “Of course not, technician.”  He gestured, standing aside to let both drone and drone specialist look upon each other.  “It was merely my curiosity getting the better of me.  I had been consulting the payroll, and noticed that a number of spark technicians were employed by this facility.  Despite that, every time I’ve been here I’ve seen only you.  Are the others busy, perhaps?”

“Busy?  Yes.”  The teal-striped mech offered, appropriately contrite yet strangely not giving Ratbat all of his attention.  He was too occupied with staring at the drone, approaching it, looking it over as if he did not see several hundred every day.  “The technicians do not often leave the power-chamber, even to recharge.  And with the factory running on overtime…”

“Overtime?”  Ratbat was forced to turn, himself, to continue the conversation with the specialist who’d walked behind him to look over the drone.  The scientist had picked up one of its arms and was examining the tiny connection pins at the tip, pulling out a small, portable multimeter. “Ahem.”  The Senator scoffed, and the multimeter dropped.

It clattered on the catwalk, but Ratbat was not focused on that. 

Instead, he watched the drone.  He saw it following the technician’s movements, watching as the teal mech bent to pick up his tool, looking at the way his fingers closed around the handle and then, as before, glancing back to Ratbat.

Interesting.

“Forgive me.  I…”  The scientist rose, flustered, stuttering in mechanical distress.  “I do not often get a chance to see the customs after they’ve left.”

“The overtime.”  Ratbat directed, his renowned patience slowly mouldering. 

“A batch order from Sentinel Prime, Senator.”  It was the technician’s turn to gesture, indicating the swiftly moving drone parts out on the floor.  “Military drones.”

And to think, he’d just been wondering if drones could learn to fight.  Obviously, Sentinel had been thinking of that, too. 

Unfortunately, Sentinel had thought of it before him.

That was unacceptable.  Ratbat hated being reactionary, especially when it was his duty as a Senator to consider problems that might come up.  If he’d been planning better, he could have already developed legislation to prevent this, or pushed to pass laws regulating combat units and guard-drones.  He could have proposed stricter control on drone customizations, or an upper limit on order quantities.  Any of those actions would have restricted Sentinel Prime from recruiting more soldiers and gaining even more power than his already near-infinate reach, something that Ratbat did not want to encourage in a field that should have been exclusively his.

Thankfully, even without the element of forethought he still had an opportunity to thwart one of his oldest foes.  Sentinel might have been the first one to think about the military application of drones, but he had not followed proper protocol to obtain them.  He had not documented his intent in public writing or sought approval of the council, and he had not obtained consent for the allocation of funds.  He most certainly hadn’t passed any expenditure through billing yet, because Ratbat reviewed those documents nightly.

That made this new development interesting.

Where was Sentinel getting this money from, and what was he going to use this many drones to do?

“We’re not in a war, last I checked.  Why make military drones?”  He began ruminating on Sentinel’s possible machinations, staring out at the factory floor while his claws rested carefully over the guard-rail. 

“I…I am not entirely sure,” The spark technician stammered.  “They may be a precaution against an extra-terrestrial threat, or terrorists, or crime waves.  He listed out a number of potential reasons, but I am afraid I was more caught up in the design at the time.  It was a very difficult algorithm, ensuring that drones are capable of recognizing enemies from friends…”

“And are they?”  Glancing back, he looked at both the technician and the drone, standing side by side. 

His drone still stared at him.

“Oh, of course!  We would not go into production if we were not certain of the outcome.  The other specialists and I spent decacycles testing it.”

“The specialists…and you.”  Intrigued by the distinction, Ratbat leaned against the railing, letting his hand slide over it while he appended notes about the military drones to an actionable file in his head. 

“I am not a fully registered technician,” the teal-striped mech revealed openly, as if unashamed by the admission.  “The factory needed a scientist capable of communicating the wishes of its clients with the other techs.  My supervisors find it…convenient…that I have not yet taken my final oaths.  Were you wishing to discuss a custom with me, today?”

Almost impressed by the technician’s ability to drive straight back into the original topic, Ratbat nevertheless chuckled and leaned off the railing, the folds of his wing-cape flattening behind him.  He had too much to do, now.  “No, I think not.  I thank you for your time, as always, but I wish to contemplate this newest of available options.”   Below, he could see the tour concluding, both body-guards shuffling along in back while his officials attempted not to get any machine-grease on their well-waxed frames. 

So, Sentinel was ordering drones suitable for combat.  Government drones, that he’d been fortunate to learn of just in time.

“Of course, sir.  I should be returning to my duties, but if you have need of any future correspondence, you know where to reach me.” 

“I do.”  Nearly wry, a smirk crossed both of their face-panels, as the scientist plodded his bulky frame away. 

He had to hand it to the Prime--no one on the council would have been so brash.  As a Religiously Appointed Leader, Sentinel had more than an extensive budget, set aside for the protection and maintenance of Cybertron and its population.  Other than in quarterly reviews, the Council paid little attention to the manner of Sentinel’s spending…

…but normally, Sentinel was not building an army.

That made this almost too easy for Ratbat.  With only a few minor regulations, he could turn this in his favor.  The council could gain some say as to the fate of these drones, he could drive a wedge between the Senate and the Prime, and he could reap a profit in military units when it ended. 

All he needed were some small insurgencies here, a little terrorism there, and a dash of fear for flavor.  Under martial law the streets would be controlled by the military, which, if he had any say in it, would be under the jurisdiction of the Senate instead of the Prime.  They could restructure everything.

Later.

That would come later. 

“Come.”  He spoke at last to his drone unit, whirling in a flash of polished, sleek magenta paint.  “Tonight, I will take you to the opera.”

And tomorrow, he would take over the world.

Chapter Text

It was a drone, in an Opera House.

It had identified the coordinates upon arrival, recognizing this location as the origin of many musical recordings that it had analyzed from the airwaves.  It had encountered them in personal databases as well while searching for passages related to the band ‘Assemble,‘ but it had dismissed the recordings at the time as irrelevant.  Opera did not contain current seditious political inferences.  Opera did not contain samples it could use to complete its current song.  Opera did not contain ‘interest.’ 

It did not like Opera.

It did not like the Opera House.

It did not like the open, echoing hallways.  It did not like the conveyor-belts.  It did not like the shifting motion of the lifts as the Senator’s opera-box was raised into position high above the concrete floor.

It did not like the chaos, and it did not like the crowd.

Every noise that echoed against the cavernous, domed ceiling became significantly distorted when it returned.  The reflections created lossy waveforms, or complex additive waveforms, or parabolic delays in previously grouped waveforms, leaving it confused.  Its audials were almost constantly over-wrought, straining to capture and extract the data from the sounds, trying to section out the clacking of pedes on slick surfaces, trying to section out the tinkle of glass decorations, trying to section out the low-pitched whumph of the huge amplifiers warming-up on-stage. 

It did not like complication. 

It did not like the Opera House.

It had no choice.

Amidst the auditory chaos, the top officials of Ratbat Holdings were taking their seats, plugging into special receptors on the rows of long, carved benches. Across the auditorium, it noticed other patrons doing the same, needing the enhancements to fully appreciate what came much more naturally to the drone.  It did not desire to plug into this port.  It would have rather been plugged into the transmission tower, capturing data as it passed through his intricate ports or creating algorithms for the separation of fundamental tones within a domed, acoustic chamber not unlike this one.  Since it would not be able to do this for some time, it had no choice but to record what it heard for processing later.  It would have to endure the echoes and the noise for now. 

“Would you care to sit, sir?” an Opera attendant spoke.

Still attempting to consider frequency filters, it did not register the query for a moment.

However, when the attendant did not depart it glanced up, checking to see if it was being addressed.  The attendant was looking at it, his arm gesturing politely toward the bench as the others positioned themselves carefully.

The drone considered this.

The attendant was similar in appearance to the other employees that it had spotted moving through the audience.  They had gleaming, silver armor, bright and easy to single out even against the myriad of colors worn by the high-society mechs below.  The drone had analyzed the light reflecting off of the gleaming surfaces, and had noticed that the paint was in complementing harmonics with the rest of the décor: white, pewter, ivory, chrome.  The attendants matched each other, and they also matched the opera house. 

It was baffled by this concept, not understanding coordinating colors any more than it understood why it was now being addressed as ‘sir.’

No. 

Colors, at least, could be processed by their frequency of occurrence:  the number of silver mechs dotting the audience, the underlying base of white walls, the unsteady noise of the crowd’s near infinite shades of paint…it could map out the patterns like a waveform, endlessly complex.

Being mistaken for a ‘sir?’

It could not map that.

It had no idea to answer the attendants simple question, so all it could do was stare.

The attendant also waited, patient, his optics flicking to the rest of the group and then back.  He was expecting a response.

The drone did not have a response.  It was accountable only to Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, third nexus council.  Only orders from its owner were absolute: all other orders were….

Non-compulsive.

It could choose to obey.

It could choose not to take a seat.

Slowly, it shook its head, and without comment the attendant bowed and scurried on his way.  There was no seat available for it to be taking, besides: It was a drone.

It was a drone that had been offered a choice.

It was a drone that had been called a ‘sir.’ 

It was aware that it was not a ‘sir.’  It was aware that ‘sirs’ possessed complete autonomy, and drones did not.

However, the attendant had not noticed that it was a drone.

The attendant had brought to its attention that it could blend in.

This information was important and was stored for later use. 

Having no further reason to reflect upon the incident, it moved to a position at the periphery of the box.  Below it, all other patrons were beginning to take their seats as well.  It would remain standing.  It would process its new knowledge at a later time, and determine new parameters of function.  It would obey Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, third nexus council…and when not in direct conflict with those orders, it would obey itself.

This was satisfactory.

With interest, it noticed the departure of the silver mechs from the boxes nearby.  A hush was falling.  The lights were dimming.  The entrance doors slowly hissed shut.

Darkness descended upon the audience, and a hollow silence filled the vast expanse of air that lay between the drone and the stage.  Its primary visual spectrum was blank.  Its audials could detect only the soft noises of gears shifting beside it and below.  It felt disconnected as it had never felt before, as if it was in a docking closet without a plug, without a ceiling, without walls, and with a thousand other drones nestled beside it. 

There was no horizon it could use to ground itself.  There was no base, there was no sensation, and there was no experience within its database that had prepared it for this.  There was nothing.

Then, there was light.

Sound erupted forth, spilling from speakers placed strategically within the walls. 

Colors blossomed. 

Music chorused off the ceilings and back, amplifying in harmonic resonances, building the shape of the cavernous room with echoes alone.  The curves of each wall, which had baffled its senses only moments before, were now enrapturing, funneling every tone with perfect clarity to every seat within. 

It understood.

It knew the song.  It could place the composer and the date of composition.  It could even remember what other eleven songs there were to follow as the actors took the stage, and could anticipate the swells in volume and diminuendo just before the singing began.

He could not describe it, after that.

He didn’t try.

He simply opened up his sensors to their full auditory spectrum and recorded. 

The actors moved, intricate modifications to their armor glinting through the multi-hued lights on the stage. Scenery changed via transparent screens and holo-images, incredible technological feats which could transform the auditorium into a foreign world, into the vastness of the cosmos, into the dark and dripping underground.  He was not aware of how the holograms worked, but he knew more important facts by observation alone:  How the gesture of an arm could change the pitch of a note, how coinciding motions from across the stage could make a duet.  There was a mere .04% chance of being constructed with a vocalizer capable of maturing into these modulations.  Even if one was commissioned, it was impossible to predict how metals warped or how plastic flexed during construction to produce a perfect, viable resonance.  Because of that, a mech who could sing was incredibly rare.

A mech who could perform was more so. 

The Opera required skill.  It relied upon the manipulation of sound through fields: bouncing the waves correctly off the sets, off the walls, even off one’s partner.  The positioning of each piece of scenery, of each mech, of each arm or leg was crucial.  The misplacement of a single digit could completely alter the outcome. 

Each trip to the Opera…could be different.

Each trip had to be.

He found himself watching with anticipation, mapping the trajectories of wave-reflection in accordance with his knowledge of the melody, waiting for each movement by the actors until he understood the underlying structure and could predict their steps. 

It was a dance to everyone else.

To him, it was the incarnation of the song.

It was beautiful.

He listened. He could not help but listen.

He could not help but hear the waves, the sounds, the harmonies that overcame him. 

He understood them, finally.

He knew….

And he awoke.

Chapter Text

It was only on the longest shifts that Megatronus was able to forget the pounding of the factory machines.

He’d hear it all night, every night, cycling in the edges of his mind, providing background music to his thoughts long after he’d retired to rest in his garage.  It dug into his circuitry, left him tapping its rhythms on the countertops or walking to its unusual beat.  It was there at all times.  It followed him home.

But when he was stuck at the factory for cycles, immersed completely in its presence, the relentless chaos finally began to fade.  When it surrounded him, his world became quiet.  Peaceful.  Lulling, even as equipment stamped hot metal into arm plates, torso plates, and shin plates, building the army that Sentinel Prime had ordered.

It bothered him, to lose track of the noise.

It bothered him, to feel like he was becoming used to a place.

It bothered him even more to watch the unending creation of drones helplessly, capable of little more than frustration as he worked in angered timing to the backbeat of machinery.

Every day, more drones were built.

Every day, Sentinel’s army grew.

He feared it, knowing all too well what purposes an army could be turned toward.

He was not so worried, however, as to miss the shuffle of footsteps approaching.  They drifted closer at a counter-beat, punctuating in the silences between the manufactured thunder, treading tentatively but with a measured purpose.  He’d learned, quickly, what noises to listen for under the constant din to keep others from sneaking up on him, and he did not need to look up now to know whose pedes approached.  “You’re late.”  Megatronus frowned, instead, tossing a broken microprocessor chip toward the waste bin.

“We had guests,” his visitor replied, approaching without fear despite the projectile, pausing only for an instant to glance curiously at the glints of tiny casings strewn across the floor. 

Megatronus glanced with him, and then shook his head, returning to his work.  He’d seen a maintenance droid sweep through the work area once, vacuuming them up, and since then he hadn’t found it necessary to improve his aim.  The chips were being counted, one way or another, either weighed in the incinerator or picked up by the bot. 

Nevertheless his guest continued, undaunted, traversing around them as if it were a task he was familiar with.  “It was an incredibly important client,” he sighed.  “I am afraid I was detained.”

Grunting in acknowledgement, Megatronus picked up another chip, looked it over, and laid it carefully inside box 45-XB.  “My break ended a quarter of a cycle ago.”  He glanced up cautiously to the supervisor’s booth, checking to see if he was being watched before his optics fall back on the tech.  “Must have been someone significant, to keep you from being on time.”

“Senator Ratbat, of the High Council.”

“Ah.”  Without missing a beat he grabbed another chip, assessed it, and chucked it toward the trash.  It was ruined in the same way most of the chips in this batch were ruined: useless, no longer even worth the minimum wages they were paying him to sort through the endless bins.  It would have been a waste of company time to even have him sorting these if it weren’t for the few, precious processors that he’d been able to salvage, testing them in a stock-drone that had been returned because of a physical defect.  This had been his first chance to really work with one up close, and he was trying his hardest to earn this place so they wouldn’t put him back on the assembly line.

He’d been there long enough to worry that coming to the factory had been a monumental waste of time.  Although he saw plenty of drones each day, he’d been kept too busy to learn anything new about them.  They worked tirelessly and efficiently, but they didn’t have heavy enough engines to match him for his power.  He could have broken dozens of them in the arena…

But merely breaking them was something any overly-large mech could do.  If he was going to stop drones from being produced and taking over the work-force, he needed to find a defect in their manufacturing process that he could exploit.  He needed something that was more psychological than physical, which could cause society as a whole to lose either faith or interest in drones—or both.  What he’d needed, was access to a drone’s behavior.

He’d gotten the chance when an over-clocked construction unit had backed into three-pallets-worth of data-chips.  The supervisors who usually patrolled the catwalks had caught him gaping at the wreckage nearby, and had been quick to assign him to sorting duty as a way of ‘giving him something to do.’

He’d tried not to smile at the reprimand.  Moving those pallets into harm’s way without being noticed hadn’t been easy.

However, it had gotten him closer than any third class mech had ever been to a completed drone processor.

For Megatronus, this was monumental.  The tiny, delicate chips he’d been handling for the past few cycles were one of the most closely guarded secrets of the industry.  They weren’t as sensitive a topic as sparks, of course, but drone processors were a crucial step in technology that had far-reaching applications.  Processors, like Sparks, were usually created by the Technicians who lived in the Core.  These were made in a manufacturing facility in Altihex…which meant someone had figured out a way to mimic a Cybertronian mind and mass-produce it.  That was fascinating to Megatronus, and it meant that maybe he had a chance to look at some drone coding and determine a way to sabotage it.  He’d spent the last few cycles trying, too.

Granted, that was difficult while the supervisors were watching him.  He was supposed to weed out what was obviously broken, test and categorize what seemed to be good by placing them in the stock drone and activating it, and then forwarding chips that still functioned onward to the right departments.  So far, no one had noticed that a few ‘good’ chips had gone missing, which gave him time to take them home to mess with them.  It was a great idea! 

Maybe it would have been better, if he’d had the right equipment to read what was on them.

“What did a Senator want with you?”  Megatronus wondered, flipping another chip to join the rejects, quietly palming a salvageable one into the cracks of his armor.  “Or is that even something you can tell a lowly laborer?”  His voice was wry, but the question wasn’t asked in jest.  The tech had been scheduled to meet him during his break period, and this was well after that.  He didn’t know how long it would be until his supervisor checked on him again.

“I doubt that anyone will bother you about our conversations.”  The specialist smiled, optics alight with what could only be pride.  “As a rank-1 scientist, I have access to all parts of this facility for purposes of research, and permission to engage any employees as I see fit.  It’s explicitly written that way in my credentials…”  Unexpectedly, he transmitted an ident code to Megatronus. 

Startled by the code transmission, Megatronus tried his best not to drop the chip that he’d just grabbed.  It had been a long time since he’d exchanged identification with a mech for reasons other than passport visas between zones, so he’d certainly never expected to receive a signal on that channel here.  It felt odd, especially accompanied with the quiet naiveté of a mech used to interacting with others of a similar status.  That couldn’t have been further from the truth, right now.  “Primary rank,” Megatronus noted, latching onto the part of the ident that he was familiar with, letting his hand dip back inside the giant box of processors.  “No wonder the supervisors will not mess with you.”  Tiny pricks of the delicate spines gripped onto the burrs in his palm as he sifted through, depositing a broken processor he’d brought in to replace the one he had just grabbed.  “Is that typical of spark technicians?” 

“Yes.”  The mech explained, succinctly.  “But I was already titled before embarking on this career path.”

“Oh?” Megatronus asked, curious enough to know more even if he used the distraction to palm another chip.  

“I gained a practicing science degree long before coming here.  Although I am new in this field, I have still been studying mechanical, electrical, and civil engineering for over half a mega-cycle, as well as dabbling in chemistry and metallurgy.   In fact, several of the foundation reports on the energy amplification propensities of electrum were written for my university thesis, and I was part of the original space-bridge research team on Lunar 2….”  He trailed off.  “I’m sorry, you didn’t ask for a biography.”

“No, but it explains enough.” It explained too much, actually.  This mech was much, much older than Megatronus had given him credit for, to start, and seemed to only be here as…well, as a hobby.  With those accomplishments behind him and the esteem of Primary Rank, it was a surprise that he was working for the factory, at all.  It was even more of a surprise that he was sharing his credentials with a dock hand, but given how he’d reacted in the underground of Kaon, perhaps he didn’t know the difference. “So why tell me?”

“Is there a reason that I shouldn’t have?”

One of the pins stuck within the gaps of Megatronus’ finger-plating and he glanced down at it, pulling his hand out to pry the chip loose.  “None that I can think of, but you‘ve got me at a disadvantage as far as knowing about scientists.  You’re the first one that I’ve met.” 

“I don’t believe that.” 

Laughing, Megatronus stood from his seat, pushing the dented stool out from behind him.  He shouldn’t have been surprised by how little the technician knew about crossing castes, but he was.  This mech was obviously smart, and he noticed almost everything.  There was no doubt about that, even without the list of credentials.  Although it still could be difficult to get him to narrow his focus in a conversation or speak without his technocratic jargon, he’d been more open and eager to communicate than anyone Megatronus had met, and he’d been able to answer questions that a gladiator never would have thought to ask.  Without him, Megatronus would not have learned enough to even consider taking these processors home…

Which meant he almost forgot that the mech could still be so ignorant.  “You don’t need to believe it, because it’s true whether you do or not.  Scientists don’t talk to laborers, laborers don’t talk to gutter trash, and nobody switches careers.”  Breaking those rules was, strangely, part of what the two of them had in common. “It’s supposed to make sense, because tanks make terrible scientists.  Their motors are more powerful than skilled, and they’re definitely not fine…”

It was meant to be a joke, but the way the spark technician was staring at him for it made his jest ring hollow.  “You’re wrong.  I’ve known two tanks that made brilliant scientists, actually.”

“Then you’ll never know three,” Megatronus countered, stunned by what he was hearing.  Only true military tanks had made it to the Primary Rank, as far as anyone had ever told him.  “The third one won’t be a mining tank, at any rate.” It would take more than attempting to program processors at home on diagnostic equipment to make him a scientist, even if that was something that he was particularly proud of.  It had almost worked, too.

“A mining tank could be a scientist.”

“Prove it,” he laughed, quietly, and grabbed the remaining box of rejects to put on the scale.  On the catwalks above he could see his supervisor standing, at last, hands on the railing outside of his office, checking to make certain every chip was accounted for, and that every chip went into the incinerator.  Unconcerned, Megatron weighed the mass of crushed plastic casings and twisted metal pins, certain that his supervisor could not tell the difference between burnt out drone processors and the burnt out Cybertronian processors he’d confiscated from the Heap any more than the scale could.

He’d been right.  When he glanced back up, the supervisor was looking elsewhere.

The spark technician, however, was not.  He was watching Megatronus with a strange expression, glancing first down to the processors and then back up at him. 

For a moment, Megatronus frowned.  While the supervisor might have been too dull to catch a processor switch, a technician could potentially notice the difference up close.  A technician might pry, wondering why regular processors were mixed into the drone batch and wondering how a laborer might have come across so many dead Cybertronians in the first place to even make the swap.  A Gladiator knew where to go for that, but a dock-hand shouldn’t. 

“I can prove it to you,” the spark tech insisted, instead.  “It will be informative, and it’s related to your original query, besides.”

Uncertain which question the technician was referring to, Megatronus reached to dump the waste bin into the incinerator, his hand settling over its side.  “My original query?”  It didn’t seem like the technician was about to accuse him of any processor swapping at this point, but now Megatronus felt like the conversation was going somewhere else equally dangerous. 

“About why we make drones so similar to us in their appearance.  My current theory is that it is because of their imprints.  Their ‘sparks.’” 

Surprised, Megatronus’ treads twitched in their housings.  “I thought you weren’t allowed to talk about sparks with non-technicians?”

“Not under normal circumstances, no…not unless there is a valid reason, and only so long as the information is being shared with someone trustworthy.  I believe I can justify both your curiosity about drone’s sparks and my curiosity about your potential trustworthiness, however.  If I have your permission to proceed…” 

Now interested, Megatronus’s fingers curled over the incinerator’s on-switch.  The two of them had circled the topic of sparks before.

Usually, he’d gotten nowhere.  The drone imprints had been one subject the technician hadn’t been willing to fully divulge information about, and, given the secrecy surrounding the almost-religious science of sparks, Megatronus hadn’t been surprised.   It had been the first topic he’d asked about in the long, cramped night at his apartment.  It had also been the first topic that the technician deftly skirted, shelling out more information about techniques and algorithms and equations than Megatronus could parse, instead. 

What he had been able to learn he’d put to use, guessing that he could change the drones the easiest through their processors. 

However, he was inexperienced with that, and had been unable to reprogram a single processor correctly thus far.  He could barely get the coding to pop up on the status screen, and editing it had been an excruciatingly slow process while the diagnostic monitor continuously tried to compare the processor to a tablet core.  He needed more information.  He needed more time, and he needed a drone to test on. 

Some of that he’d been given, and he glanced up to the stock drone which had one of his doctored chips in it now. 

Some of it he hadn’t, because the chips were almost sorted and he was running out of time. 

He needed the scientist to keep teaching him, first.

This was his chance.

“Very well,” he agreed, and pressed the on-switch, feeling the heat of the incinerator burning away the evidence of his latest chip-swaps.  If the technician hadn’t noticed they were the wrong chips, he would have no chance to say anything, now.  His secret was safe, depending on what the spark technician was about to ask of him.

Given that, it was disconcerting when the smaller mech pulled out what looked to be a handle with a slender box attached and began fiddling with it.  “Good!  I shall try to be expedient.”

“With what?” Megatronus frowned, not recognizing the device that the spark tech was assembling.

“With my portable oscilloscope,” the technician answered, as if those words were explanation enough.  “Technically, this is an extensively modified portable oscilloscope, converted by myself so that it can take field readings on sparks instead of alternating currents.”  Extending two antennae from the far end of the box, the teal mech plugged an extension wire into his wrist, and aimed the device at Megatronus.  “It took a considerable amount of effort adapting it for work outside the laboratory, but since I’m hardly in a lab these days I needed something that could move. Please stand still…”

The technician started forward.

Megatronus instinctively backed away.  “You can read sparks?”  He growled, horrified.  He didn’t know what information could be obtained through parsing someone’s spark signature, but he definitely did not want certain facts revealed.  “You realize that this is what they used to classify us, don’t you?”

“That is precisely what it is.”  The scientist confirmed excitedly, looking up at Megatronus as if he didn’t understand the full atrocities behind what the device represented.  “Or, rather, it is a smaller, portable version of it, as I was explaining.  However, I can use this to look at any spark much like the technicians at the Core’s manufacturing facilities do, even if I lack the experience necessary to classify anyone.”

“But you can still read sparks.”

“That is why we are called spark technicians, yes.”  The scientist smiled, awkwardly, still oblivious to the reasons why Megatronus was upset but obviously trying to be polite in his own way.  “Is there a problem?”

“Of course there is a problem!”  His back was to the incinerator, for one thing, leaving his options for retreating limited.  “It is my spark, and you are a technician.  There are few enough aspects of my life that remain private, and this is one of them!”

The spark tech stopped advancing, brushing aside a broken processor carefully before it would have crunched beneath his foot.  He looked down at it for a moment and then looked back up towards Megatronus, clearly perplexed by the behavior but also just as clearly at a loss for what to do.  “It’s…nothing to be afraid of—“

“I’m not afraid.”

“Of…of course,” he stammered, and reached down to pick the processor up off of the floor.  “I think you may be misinterpreting the potential of this device, however.  I cannot read your memories from it.”

Still wary, Megatronus did not yet move.  “Then what are you going to do?”

“I just want to show you how this works.  But…here, look, I can show you another way, instead.”  Setting the broken processor down on Megatronus’ stool, the technician turned towards the sample drone that Megatronus had been working on—the one that still had one of his edited chips in it, and raised the Oscillator.

“No!” Megatronus shouted, and stepped forward to intercept, crushing chips beneath his treads and startling the technician into lowering his device.  He did not know what to expect if the teal-striped mech were to read its spark, and he was more than a little worried about finding out.  The drone had failed to boot properly earlier, as had his seven other programming attempts before that—all duds, all missing some vital component that he couldn’t figure out how to code, but all distinctly lacking the coding that had been on them in the first place.  “Will it matter if the processor inside works?  I’ve been testing it with broken chips all day.”

As if to illustrate, he raised his treads and removed one of the crushed chips from the bottom pointedly, tossing it towards the waste bin.  For the first time, it sailed expertly in.

“It would be more convenient if you had a working processor chip, but it shouldn’t matter either way.  Have none of these been salvageable?”

Megatronus shook his head, turning towards his drone.  “Some of them.  Not many.”  Without stepping on any additional chips, he shuffled across the floor gingerly, reaching up and behind to hit the panel in the back of the drone’s head that opened up the processing hatch for maintenance.  “This chip was malfunctioning.”  He explained, significantly more smoothly than he’d thought the words might come out given the nature of the chip in question.  “I couldn’t even get the drone to boot.”

Small motors whirred to life as the panel slid aside, depositing the chip into Megatronus’ hands.  That had been a closer call than he’d wanted, but the processor was his, now.  It was safe. 

It was safe for only moments.  The spark tech reached out, lowering his tool to take the drone’s microchip before Megatronus closed his fingers.  “I’d like to see it.”

Unwilling to engage in any new and utterly suspicious activities, Megatronus had no choice but to let him, despite his growing apprehension.  This was dangerous.  It was more dangerous than simply letting the spark tech get a reading of his spark, in more ways than one.

His attempts at a new drone program were on that chip. 

He knew only the basics of programming, but that was all he’d ever had to go off of.  It was more than most mechs got.  He couldn’t craft elegant lines of code, he couldn’t disguise intent behind closed loops, and he couldn’t keep an expert technician with stellar cycles of experience from recognizing that a processor had been tampered with. 

It wouldn’t be visually apparent, at least.  For now, so long as he acted as if nothing was wrong, he was safe.  If the scientist decided to take the chip and study it, then he’d have a problem. 

That was the most dangerous part of all—for both him, and for the scientist.

However, the scientist did not seem interested in going anywhere.  After a few moments, he merely shook his head, and held the chip back up for Megatronus to see.

“This chip is ruined,” he said, simply.

“How can you tell?” Megatronus asked, surprised by the pronouncement.  He wasn’t a genius programmer, but he’d thought his work had at least been competent.

“The input pin on the T-1000 is fused into the surge device.  When a significant current has disrupted the flow, the tips turn bronze, like these here.”  The scientist pointed, letting Megatronus see the edges for himself.  “Usually this happens when there’s been a spike in power.”

Suddenly confused, Megatronus peered down at the tiny bronze tips of the processor connections, hoping that this meant his chip was too damaged to be read by the technician.  “A spike coming from what?”

“Probably from a novice not waiting long enough after powering on a drone to install a processor chip.”  The scientist offered, wry.  “Some boot up procedures have a larger current pull than others.  It is important to wait twenty clicks before attempting to replace a processor to prevent this sort of feedback.” 

Twenty clicks.

Power spikes.

Novice installation.

Had Megatronus really burnt out his own modified processors because of this one, tiny, technicality? 

If he had, he was going to be furious with himself. 

“But what if the processor is installed before powering on the unit?”  He frowned, wondering how he’d managed to test a few chips for the factory just fine.

“Then its performance should be nominal.”  The spark technician nodded, slipping the tiny chip into a receptacle on his side.  “I am surprised the supervisor didn’t warn you.” 

“So am I.”  Glancing up toward the supervisor’s booth, Megatronus’s teeth bared for a moment before he stopped himself.  This was not the first incident which had occurred on the job, and it would not likely be the last.  Factories still needed a reason when they fired a mech, and it was all too easy to fabricate one based off ‘poor performance.’  Workers did not have much recourse left.

His time was running out.

He was also painfully close to a breakthrough here, and he knew it.  If he could keep bringing in processors to test, then he’d eventually be able to program one that could significantly alter the drone’s behaviors outside of the factory.  If he was lucky, he’d be able to bring them under his control.

If he wasn’t, then he’d have to think of something else.

“I think this one should be acceptable,” the spark technician spoke, holding up one of the processors that Megatronus had sorted into a ‘possibly-not-a-dud’ bin.  “All of the connectors are still intact, and it is one of the master chips.  That should make it harder to break.”

Raising a hand, Megatronus caught the microprocessor that the scientist threw, cradling it quickly before it could bounce away.  “Master chips?”

“They are chips which have been hand-programmed and hand-designed.  The coding for the rest of the chips of each series is based off a master chip—you can tell which ones they are because of the end digits of each serial code.  That, and they always feel more rigid to me.”

Megatronus glanced down at the tiny chip, barely able to focus his optics on the microscopic serial code much less determine how rigid it was.  It looked like every other chip to him. 

Being able to distinguish them in the future, however, could make a difference.  If every chip in a series was based off a master chip—then all he needed to do was reprogram a master chip and get it to the chip manufacturing facility.

That could come later.

For now, it was as good a chip as any for the test that the technician wanted to do, so he pushed it into the small cradle in the back of the drone’s head and closed the hatch.

Then, he powered it on.

“Alright, spark tech,” he said, stepping back away from the drone.  “Show me how your device works.”

The drone hummed, quietly, its engine warming as it cycled through the boot-up protocols on the master chip. 

Without waiting for those protocols to finish, the spark technician raised the oscilloscope and approached.  The two ends of its antennae pressed forward, connecting with the metal on each side of the drone’s torso.  It whirred, quietly, a soft noise against the background loudness of the factory, activating sensors in Megatron’s external network that made him feel as if strong, invisible magnets were hovering nearby, caressing his electromagnetic field. 

It was entirely uncomfortable. 

It was also, he realized, why spark technicians had the thick armor that they did. 

They worked with sparks.

Now, in a strange way, he was working with sparks, too.  He was being given insight into something that, before coming to the factory, had been only heresay to him.  It was little surprise that the technician wanted to trust him before revealing this knowledge, because this knowledge was not meant to be so easily given out.  It was significant. 

It had been enough to sentence him to a life of working in the mines, after all.

Both compelled and appalled at once, Megatronus loomed over the spark tech’s shoulder, desiring to look at the strange and foreign readings that he took. 

There was a problem with that.

“It connects directly to my processor.”  The tech whispered, glancing around and up at Megatronus, anticipating the question that inevitably came from the realization that his oscillator had no screen. “I’ve already installed programs that convert the data so that I can work directly with the output.”

“You brought a tool that only you can use to demonstrate to me how sparks work?” 

“No.”  There was a quick shake of a heavy helm.  “I brought this tool to look at your spark.  I just want you to understand, first, that it isn’t harmful.”

“And how am I supposed to know that if I can’t see the output?”  Completely perplexed, Megatronus looked down at the drone.

“Because it is an Oscilloscope.  It’s only capable of reading frequencies, just like I told you, not memories or data or…anything, besides the signature.  And now it’s capable of reading even less from you, because I recalibrated it from this drone.”

Megatronus stared, having no idea what that implied.

“It means that, no matter who else gets access to my Oscilloscope, the data stored from you will be inconsequential unless the correct calibration is used.  In other words—only I will know what happens here, today.”

Glancing up, Megatronus noticed that the supervisor was still absent, but that did not make him any more comfortable with this.

“I’m trusting you with data meant only for spark technicians,” the teal-striped mech continued.  “Can you trust me with this?”

It wasn’t easy.

He didn’t find it easy to trust, anymore.

Frowning, he looked away.  “Will you be able to tell anything about me, if it was calibrated from a drone’s spark?”

The look he got was plainly patient.  “Of course.”  The optics shuttered closed, and opened again.  “This drone has a standardized, registered spark-imprint.”

It took a moment before that sunk in, distracting him enough from the impending question of trust.  “All drones have the same spark?”  Megatronus wondered, harsher than he’d intended to be.

“No, that isn’t what I mean.”  The technician offered, watching intently for a signal that only he could see on his internal HUD.  “But it is similar.  All drones come from the same spark.  At least, most of them do.  There are some that we specialize for work in highly electromagnetic environments, and a few of the customs aren’t the same, but most of the sparks are.  We make sure to modify each one slightly to make hacking attempts all that much harder, though I doubt any outsider would be able to hack a drone.” 

Fascinated, Megatronus realized that this, in fact, was the piece that he’d been missing.  Though he had not been hacking processors, precisely, what he’d been doing was close enough to that.  “Why can’t outsiders hack into drones?”

“Because it is the spark that affects the processor, not the other way around.  One cannot bully the processor into accepting its commands, if they are not in line with the frequencies of the spark.  Since taking spark frequencies is a difficult task outside of a spark technician’s laboratory…”

“…then any maintenance on drones requires that the drones be brought back here.”  Megatronus finished, stunning his partner into silence for the first time. 

Drones could not be reprogrammed remotely.

Not, it seemed, unless he had a way to measure their sparks. 

That made him feel better about the safety of his own processor, but worse about what he intended to do with drones. 

“It seems that I underestimated you.” The scientist smiled, finally looking away from his oscilloscope. 

“It’s a sound concept,” Megatronus smirked back.  “It keeps the money in the factory.”  And put all of their resources under one roof.  Business-wise, it was brilliant.

Strategically speaking, it was not.  One bomb could level all their work, which was something that he’d have to keep in mind.

“However, you’re going to need a lot more spark technicians,” Megatronus continued, glancing toward the far end of the factory where the faint indigo glow signaled the sparking room. 

“Now you understand why I am in this profession.” 

“I get that you’re needed to do maintenance work on drones.”  He grunted, his optics sliding back down to the smaller mech.  “But I don’t understand how that applies to me.” 

“Oh!  Right.  That…well, that is simple.”  The other waved the oscilloscope slowly back and forth.  “This is just for my peace of mind.  If you’re willing to give a piece of yourself, then I can feel better about giving pieces of my livelihood.  Everything is calibrated.  I’ve read the drone’s spark, so now I can read yours if you’ll give the word.”

Megatronus sighed, having a choice in this, but not having a choice if he wanted to be learning more.  “What will your little machine say?”

The spark technician tilted his head, bringing the oscillator to a stop, pointed directly at Megatronus’ chest plating. “If you are someone I can trust with all the secrets you now know.”

“That sounds somewhat dangerous.”

“It is.”  The teal mech smiled.  “That’s why I’m eager to find out.”

Chapter Text

He remembered the trip home in immaculate detail.

It began with hundreds of mechs, slowly filing out of their seats.  The rumbles of their engines mingled, filling the vastness of the space along with their soft chatter, stretching servos, and heels clacking over polished marble.  He could hear it all, separating out each fragment, delighting in the newness of each noise.  There were the deep vibrations of the turbo lifts.  There was a splash of laughter, light and high above the voices in the crowd.  There was the quiet creak of his own hydraulics shifting, as he followed Ratbat’s entourage toward the Opera’s grand entranceway.  This felt different from simply analyzing sound.

For the first time, this felt like experiencing it.

He could not grasp what made those two concepts distinct.  He could not process why this input held importance, any more than he could process why he’d saved and re-mixed his first song.  A system scan revealed no change in hardware, and no change in software.

Yet he felt…

He felt.

He felt inspired.

He was deriving satisfaction from every sensation around him.  The murmurs of the audience, the scrape of metal fingers over metal shoulders, the sudden rushing of wind off transports from the streets as he approached the entranceway, all became new. 

Outside, the clarity heightened.  There were no echoes underneath the open sky.  He could hear the hum from the great plasma screens and holograms that lit the sidewalks and the road.  He could hear the far-off scratches of music drifting from a radio.  He could hear the sounds of wheels on metal roadways, sliding lower in pitch as their increasing distance blurred harmonics, trembled, and were gone.

He recorded that.

He recorded the deep, mechanical sounds of mechs transforming.  He recorded the bright exclamations of a group of critics, exiting the Opera.  He recorded the opening slice of the transport’s door when the Senator’s ship arrived for them, and he recorded the creaking stair that groaned each time a molded foot was placed upon it.

He recorded everything.

The silence, however, was what fascinated him the most.  He did not cease his sampling even when the awkward conversations of the mechs around him started to die down.  There was something in the silence of the transport.

There was noise.

It was random, unpredictable noise, originating from dozens of different sources.  Every mech produced an ambient pitch, blended from the running of their engines, the combustion of fuel, the shifting of their plating.  He could add to this the roaring from the transport’s thrusters, or the whispering of the wind off the hull.  Someone was tapping their fingers on a data pad.  Somewhere outside, there was the distant blaring of a horn.  There was no real silence, after all.

He began trying to count out all the noises, separating them through filters, classifying them by variance in frequency.  There were hundreds.  Even if he’d had full access to his tower’s processors, he would have had difficulty in manipulating every nuance, or citing every source.  They were chaotic, representing variables that would have been nearly impossible to mathematically reproduce.  Like each performance of the opera, no one sample of this ‘silence’ could ever be the same.

Every moment was its own, unique experience.

Every moment was worth recording. 

He was recording them all. 

He’d obtained over one thousand new samples by the time the transport docked into the hanger, settling itself securely on the roof of Ratbat Holdings.  The mechs departed leisurely in groups, the majority occupying the attention of the Senator, addressing the bureaucrat with their concerns.  No one noticed the drone lagging behind as they moved on.  No one noticed the drone standing on the rooftop, watching them withdraw, still recording silence.  No one bothered to look back.

Unconcerned, he let them leave, unwilling to follow their noise when he’d already sampled it. 

He circled the transport, instead, moving away from where the voices echoed, listening to the sharp staccato pings released by cooling metal.  Entranced, he reached his arm out toward the surface of the hull, wondering at the sounds, brushing his forearm against it to understand.  It was comfortable, and warm, and he could feel each ping through the metal like a vibration that he couldn’t record.  Not knowing what to do with the sensation, he moved on.

As he passed by the front, he glanced toward the driver.

The old mech was standing just outside the cab of the sleek aircraft, looking the ship up and down.  He nodded to himself, completely unaware he had a visitor, reaching back in the cockpit to pull out a soft, white cloth and a tube of polish. With an expert touch he carefully applied it to the surface, quietly buffing out the minutest of smudges in the semi-darkness, humming to himself.

The tune was familiar.

It was familiar because the drone had written it.  He recognized the remix instantly, and, smoothly, he played the next few bars of melody from the speakers on his helm.

Startled, the driver nearly dropped the cloth.  “By the hammer of Solus,” the mech began, and glanced nervously in his direction.  “Is there something I can help you with, sir?”  He called out, even as his optics dropped respectfully away.

Now familiar with being addressed as ‘sir,’ the drone did not hesitate in his response, merely shaking his head, once.  He stared, instead, waiting to see what the driver would do, wondering if he would get to hear his own music hummed by this strange mech a second time.  He had not seen many mechs as worn looking as this.  He’d not seen many with a few flecks of paint peeling, or with rust at the edges of their armor.  The other mech looked up, searching for his answer, and instead noticed where the drone’s helm was turned.  “I may not be in the greatest shape, myself, but I can guarantee that this ship will be.  Just lemme know if I am bothering you.”

Slowly, he shook his head, unable to comprehend the concept.  Appearances had never been a topic of consideration.  It was only today that they had registered as a factor, at all.  After a moment, still having no way to respond, he gestured helpfully toward another smudge a little further up the transport.

“Heh, alright, alright.  I’ll get back on that.”  The driver cocked his head in an expression he could only assume was puzzlement, and turned back to his work.

Having nothing else to occupy his attention, the drone, too, considered resuming his duties.

Reviews of protocol indicated that, when not otherwise occupied by orders, he was to return back to the docking closet and recharge.  He could perform this task, since there were currently no orders outstanding. 

He left the roof.

The passageways into and out of Ratbat Holdings were not familiar to him, but he had the coordinates to his docking closet on file in his cache.  It was not far from the hanger.  He could seek out the path, with reference to his position.  He could circumnavigate the walls that blocked his direct passage.  He could go where he was supposed to be.

The transmission tower.

His home. 

However, he was still uncertain what he was to do when he arrived.  He considered it as he passed quietly through the dark hallways, working his way back toward his room.

Currently, he was still within the 33 cycle period where he would otherwise be monitoring broadcasts had Sentator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, third nexus council, not directly interceded with his prior orders. ‘Shopping’ had occurred. So had a tour of a factory.  So had Opera.

He had recorded that, too.

Brashly, he replayed it now, listening to the part that had particularly moved him, letting the rich vocal tones of the lovers drift hauntingly through the corridors.  It had been a scene meant to convey sorrow, separation, and loss, all of which were only recognizable to the drone as melodies.  The melodies had been enough to understand, however, as the Hero and the Quintesson were pulled apart by their conflicting cultures, forbidden to interact, and ordered against their wills to continue a battle that had raged for centuries. 

They sang of what it meant to be suddenly, irrevocably alone…

And abruptly he ceased the recording, to let the silence fall.

“ZZzth..”  He tried to speak into the darkness, and found that nothing intelligible came out.  He had never tried before.  He’d never wanted to.  “Zzzsh…” 

Static.

Speakers, he had.  He had third generation crystal clear, hyper-filament speakers, meant for direct transference of audio files when necessary.

However, he did not have a voice.  He could not produce words that were his own.  He could not produce a melody.

“We’re going shopping.”  He finally played, a perfect copy of Ratbat’s voice, recorded earlier that day.  “We’re going.”  A pause.  “Shopping.   Zzzhhhhpp.”  He included the sliding of the transport door, and paused, looking at the familiar hallway that he knew led to his room. 

He had arrived. 

This was familiar, once again.

Eagerly he strode through the doorway, not paying attention as it parted to allow him entrance.  Instead, he moved directly toward the console, placing the stubs of both arms solidly into their casings, fitting the right port to the input jack.

He had desired this.

Here, he could connect to the world with ease, letting the vastness of familiar systems wash over his senses.  These were his proper coordinates inside and outside of the mainframe, having access to the I/O tower and the databases within.  This was where he belonged, where he was meant to return to, where he could reside despite the changes he had felt.  It had been a busy day. 

Everything was different.

He was different.

He had collected a great number of samples, and had bypassed the time he was required to spend in the closet.  He had achieved knowledge, and an awareness of himself, and the building blocks he’d needed to complete his second song. 

The tower, however, did not feel as if it had changed.

Since there was no order to contradict it, he restarted his active shift, setting the 33-cycle counter back to zero.  He could recharge, here, siphoning power from the jack directly, taking energy from Ratbat Holding’s systems.  He could continue his work.  He could…

“Communications drone.”

On a monitor beside him, Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, third nexus council, appeared via uplink.  He turned to stare, having no other method of acknowledgement. 

“I am still awaiting progress on the decoding of the file that I sent you.  Increase priority, and see that it is done.”

The image vanished as quickly as it’d come, and he returned back to his functions, increasing the priority on the request. 

“Communications drone,” he repeated, letting the taste of his designation vibrate through his speakers in another mech’s voice.  It was his name, and it was also his purpose. 

It was his purpose to obey.  It was his purpose, now, to decode the very remix that he’d originally assembled. 

He would comply.

But not before he finished his new song, made final touches, and transmitted it across the spectrum for anyone who wished to find it. 

This piece was not a remix. 

It was his own, original song. 

It had been made by him, with samples collected by him, on systems that only he could access.  This one was his, and he would share it with the world.

He had a voice, he realized, as he watched the tune spreading out across the airwaves, bounced by station after station and replayed.  It was not a standard voice, and it was not possible for use in social interacting, and it was not likely to ever be identified with him, but it was a voice, in its own way. 

It was his voice.

It just would never sing an Opera. 

Chapter Text

Looking back over the day, Ratbat found that it had not lived up to the expectations that he’d set.

He’d initially made great strides in bringing Sentinel Prime’s plan to build an army of combat drones to the attention of the Council, and had been satisfied by the stunned looks and whispered conversation that his revelation had induced.  Although Sentinel had enjoyed centuries of freedom with regard to military protocol and spending, Ratbat had been certain that his fellow council members would be as aghast as he himself had been upon learning that a significantly large aggressive force was being built without their permission, and out of drones, no less.  Drones were a heated topic on their own, before anyone even began grafting weapons onto them. 

Unfortunately, Sentinel Prime still held immense sway within the council despite being a religiously appointed official instead of a democratically elected one.  He still spoke with the voice of a war hero who had been chosen by epic figures of old, set in his place by ancient artifacts and ceremonies that the older Senators were still enamored with.  Ratbat, despite his maturity, was one of the younger members of the Council, and while he could not deny that Sentinel had helped secure Cybertron in place half-a millennia ago fighting space pirates and securing lines of trade through aggressive tracts of space…he was hard-pressed to think of anything revolutionary that the Prime had done for Cybertron lately.  At this point, Sentinel was as much a relic as the trinkets which adorned his chassis, and Ratbat believed his political machinations to be just as rusted and fading as well.

Sadly, he’d found that not everyone agreed with that sentiment.  Apparently, certain Senators were under the impression that military affairs were, as they always had been, well within the jurisdiction of the Prime.  Certain Senators were also under the impression that the Council and its members could hold too much power, which was an opinion that Ratbat didn’t share.  He’d obtained his power through hard work and shrewd dealings, after all--which was more than could be said for Sentinel, who had obtained his power because of an archaic flashlight.  Sentinel had never seemed comfortable perched on the delicately balanced scale of politics because he’d been forged as a warrior.  He had a tactical mind, no doubt…but he was too straight-forward, treating every perceived problem like it could be outgunned.  The Prime did not understand how intimately Cybertron was meshed with chaos, how easy it would be to slip from civilization into anarchy based off of something as simple as the price of polishing cloths. 

Ratbat, on the other hand…did.  He’d built his company—not quite from the ground up, but by using the status of his progenitor to gain needed favors, and by making each credit of borrowed capital count.  He’d learned the ins and outs of business and negotiation, and then he’d learned how he could apply those same skills towards buying friends and followers.  Those commodities had won him his first seat on the Council…and then better and better seats as he traded up.  From there?  It was just a matter of knowing what Cybertron needed to survive.  Sometimes, he’d enacted policies for a strong and stable government, because a well-run government meant a competitive and fruitful market for himself and the masses.  At other times, he’d entered into bargains—some shady, some legitimate—which weakened the government, because with less regulation he could inflate the cost of goods and sway demands.  He’d learned what times were best to go about instituting such strengths and weaknesses no matter who it would affect, and he’d learned thusly that sometimes politics could mean leaving behind good friends.  He’d learned how not to care.

He could be emotionless, when he needed to be.  He could be compassionate, when the situation called for it.  He could be anything, so long as Cybertron continued to function.

Did Sentinel Prime consider all of that?

Ratbat was not sure, but it was not important so long as the Council seemed to think he did.  It just meant that Ratbat was going to have to get what he wanted in another way.

With a gesture, he selected a tune from his holographic display, and chose the most tranquil and calming melody that he could find.  The music didn’t help as much as he would have liked for it to, but he doubted that anything save for an hour in hot oil could have soothed him now.  He hated to feel ruffled, especially when he needed to think.  He’d managed to coerce the council into voting on what to do with the drones before the end of the lunar cycle so that the factory he owned wasn’t held up indefinitely.  However, two of his closest allies had made a sudden and unexpected reversal in their usual beliefs: adding their preliminary votes in Sentinel’s favor.  With those two votes on Sentinel’s side Ratbat could not hope to take the majority, but it wasn’t enough to knock him out of the running, either.  Sentinel needed to have at least two-thirds of the votes, otherwise Ratbat’s factory could be held in limbo indefinitely while the motion went to arbitration.  That…would be a serious blow to his profits.

Pressing a button on his chair, Ratbat summoned his personal serving drone, and tried to think on what his allies wanted from him.  Optarus was always in need of additional alliances to help pass motions on his more…personal…projects, and Decimus was growing older and was not in the position of solvency that he once was.  This move did provide them excellent leverage against Ratbat to gain his funding and his favor…but that was far too obvious.  If they wanted to extort him, they’d have come right out with it by now instead of waiting to see what happened next.  There was of course, the possibility that they actually wanted this new army to belong to Sentinel Prime, but what would that gain them?  Anything they stood to gain would be much less than they’d have gotten from Ratbat via extortion.  No.  Their tactic had to be to stall the vote.

While the vote was pending, no drones could be produced…but worse, the longer that it waited the more likely it was that Ratbat would lose the great lead in technology he currently held.  No one else had yet figured out how to build drones with the complexity that the spark techs he supported could.  Not that those spark techs were doing anything right now…

Which was the answer, really.  If his factory was not producing any drones, then he was not making any money.  If Optarus and Decimus could postpone the motion long enough, they’d have time to research and build drone factories of their own, and if Decimus brought his influence and Optarus brought his pocket book?  Then they could become major competitors, and re-negotiate Sentinel’s contract so they were cut into the deal.  It was astonishingly clever of them.

It was also strangely simple to disrupt.  Ratbat had introduced the pair of them, bringing together the distinguished legacy senator and the younger, flashier jetsetter.  He’d long known their strengths and had put them where he’d needed them, and also knew their weaknesses as well as they thought they knew his.  “Communications drone.”  He spoke languidly, sliding back into his chair and activating his direct line to his most beautiful, expensive drone. 

Immediately a monitor on the wall lit up, switching on to view the cramped room of the I/O tower on the top-most floor.  The drone was there, as always, plugged into its transmission interface.  Distantly, Ratbat could hear the sound of music playing behind it. 

Was that High Strung’s third movement for synthetic quartets?

It sounded like it was.  How odd. 

“Generate a transmission for me that simply states ‘As Discussed,’” he asked.  “Encrypt it heavily, and wire it to Decimus along with a sum of 10,000 credits.  Alter the origination point so that it contains a pass-through code from Optarus’ tower, and inform me of all activity generated.”

The drone nodded once, and Ratbat cut the feed to wait and see what happened next. 

Optarus was a high-strung, social mech…but he bordered on the wrong side of paranoia.  He did not gain influence easily, both because he flashed his pocketbook too frequently to be liked and also because he spoke opinions freely that even most politicians could not tolerate.  He made enemies using words alone, generating enough that he could not help but suspect rivalry from the few allies he managed to gain.  Ratbat appreciated a healthy dose of suspicion himself, but the problem with Optarus was that he could not stop himself from accusing someone once he amassed enough ‘proof.’  He would notice a transmission arriving at Decimus’ headquarters, and he had enough money to pay good archivists to decode it and find out its true origin point: Ratbat Holdings.  He would thus suspect, rather erroneously, that Optarus and Ratbat were now in the process of making a deal, and that he was about to be left out of the proceedings…just like he normally was.

Decimus, on the other hand, did not understand transmission quality enough to bother analyzing it, and would instead see only what was presented to him.  Decimus made friends easily, and while he did not trust them outright…he was more than willing to accept ‘free’ money from what seemed to be an obvious source.  He would think the transmission came from Optarus, and if he found it strange at all it would only be in regards to the low value of the offering.

If all went well, Optarus would cut off connection with Decimus, thinking that he’d already been betrayed, and Decimus would not object, thinking that Optarus was a penny pincher who couldn’t bother to add another 0 or two onto his alliance agreement.  They just weren’t quite the duo they seemed meant to be, without Ratbat to sharpen them into the triangle that the three of them once made.  It left Ratbat with the option to bribe them both using the normal methods, and for the motion to pass as intended.

Or.  At the worst…they could keep their petty alliance, and in the end Ratbat would change his own vote so that Sentinel Prime would get his army of drones.  At least that would get his factory moving again, even if it put him in a disagreeable mood.

As he watched the transmissions that erupted like a fissure from the two Senator’s towers, however, Ratbat knew that it would not come down to that.  He’d won tonight by using tactics that Sentinel had never quite been able to grasp, and he would celebrate that victory with a glass of energon and a few moments of letting the world move on without him.

His serving drone brought the energon, and his chair provided the peace as he relaxed backward, letting the panels shift around him until he felt like he was floating, suspended gently over the lights of Cybertron that reflected from his polished ceiling.  It was like flying, but without the added annoyance of having to go out to the roof or actually deal with the dust and pollution of the city clogging up his intake filters.  He was flight-capable, but what was the point when he spent most of his lifetime indoors?  He was too rich to have to fly, and he didn’t enjoy doing it for sport. 

He might have, at one point.  However, his progenitor had not been flight-capable, and because of that he’d never considered it a priority to have Ratbat taught.  Instead, he’d waited until Ratbat had insisted—at the point in time where it was far past embarrassing that he did not know how to fly.  If status on Cybertron was directly related to how high your apartments reached, then it was no surprise jets and helicopters and hover-mounted-automobiles encompassed the majority of the rich and status-obsessed.  It should have been a glorifying triumph to fly, with all those of lesser make and model scattered far below him like specks of dust.

Instead, his first flight was a bitter memory. 

It didn’t help him relax now, either…but what he’d been through today reminded him of the struggles of his youth.

His life at its start had been full of rules and full of hours spent disseminating programming, learning how to operate his body and learning how to operate a business from a mech who did not understand the meaning of the word ‘fun.’  Ratbat, impetuous and ambitious, had finally obtained permission for flying lessons after submitting an article to his progenitor on how flight could be used to get a better ‘perspective’ for selecting property to acquire.

He’d been smug and satisfied about that success, until his tutor walked him to the edge of a modestly-tall skyscraper and pushed him off .  He’d fallen, and not elegantly—screaming the whole way down before he was snatched out of the air in disgrace.   For a few moments, he’d simply clung on to the arms that held him, staring at a nearby rooftop where his progenitor was observing the proceedings.  Then, his projenitor had nodded, and Ratbad had screamed as he was flown up to an even dizzier height and let go again.  He’d been forced to weather four more drops that day before he’d managed to figure his systems out, before he’d managed to calculate the right amount of propulsion to keep aloft without stalling, but he’d never forgotten the fall.  He’d never forgotten how many times his progenitor had given permission to raise him up to drop him, either. 

He’d hated his progenitor for that.  They’d not talked, afterward, for decacycles. 

However, he’d learned something important, as well.

He’d learned that it didn’t matter if you fell…the important part was to climb the height, and try again.

These days, watching the reflections of Cybertron in his mirrored ceiling reminded him of just how far he’d risen.  Here, he could witness everything like he was a conductor, watching the lights down below and moving them at his whim.  They almost seemed to match the music which was coming out of the chair, and if he raised his hands upwards he could pretend like he was holding all those tiny, fragile sparks between his clawed digits, watching them wink on and off between brightness and darkness like they were moving through a dance.  He wanted to believe he had that kind of control.  Power made him happy…and purpose…and here, he could have both.

Ratbat reached out for the data-pad that his serving drone was holding, taking it in one hand and the fluted glass of energon that it had produced for him only moments before in the other.  His chair had moved on in its music selection to something relaxing, anticipating his need and pulling him back into his nightly routine so he could finish his tasks for the day without thinking any more about the upcoming vote.  Instead, he pulled in a deep intake of air, and handled the first order of business that had been delivered.

It was the song decryptions he’d been waiting for from his communications drone, finished, listed out perfunctorily as only such a flawless machine would: raw data, cold and immense and relentlessly accurate.  He sat up further in his chair, shifting from a horizontal position to a standard one as he took another sip of energon, his interest piqued.  Music always managed to occupy him in a way few other things could…but as he scrolled swiftly through the file, a new lance of worry pierced its way through his thoughts.  This report wasn’t about the music itself.  This report was about the underlying encryptions in the song.  Apparently, the analyst had been correct to point out that there was something here worth researching, as the content that the music seemed to contain was more distressing than he’d initially suspected.  The data, captured and magnified into its component pieces as the drone had presented it, was not merely in list-format.  It was a list.  It was names, over and over again, with designations and job descriptions.  It was odd.

It was more than odd.

The list contained the identities of all of his employees—every single worker in his corporation, from his personal secretary to the janitor who ruthlessly scrubbed the second-street lobby below.  He recognized Redirect, and Holdout, and Swivel.  He recognized hundreds more, but there were thousands still beyond that. 

What…did it mean?  He scrolled further and further down, wondering how a group of musicians might have come across this data, and wondering why they’d chosen to store it in a song.  Were they trying to use their band as a front, to ferry corporate secrets back and forth?  Were they ‘cover’ artists, or were they really ‘covert’ artists?

Ratbat’s amusement at his pun quickly gave way to horror as he scrolled further down the list.  It was more complete than he’d thought.  Someone hadn’t just gained access to the employees on official records, but had somehow accessed his private records as well, ones which Ratbat only kept in a scant few locations.

The composer of this song also had the names of his informants.

For a moment he imagined this was some sort of mistake.  It had to be.  Perhaps the wrong report had been appended to this one.  Perhaps one of his analysts had access the wrong files, or even his drone.  His communications drone could have accidentally ventured into Ratbat’s personal systems for other reasons, and returned these lists instead of the appropriate decryptions.  Any explanation had to be more reasonable than what was being provided to him…but any other explanation would be wrong. 

At the bottom of the list lay proof enough--the complex coding of the waveform overlaid on top of the identities, each name and employee number overlapping like a wave itself to form the correct amplitude for the song.  Only with every name and number, together, could the music even exist.

It was a masterpiece made out of a list and translated into music.

Even in his newly dawning horror, Ratbat recognized the art. 

He heard it, in the tune repeating in his head, in the remembered beats of a song both modern and primitive.  He heard it echoing too easily through his processor, catching there and burrowing there, perfect algorithms of repetition and change.

He heard it…

Only it wasn’t in his head.  It was playing, now, over his speakers, and it wasn’t quite the same song that it had been was a moment ago. 

Ratbat put the datapad down, his attention focusing entirely on what he was hearing, now.  There was something playing out loud that was an undeniable successor to this problematic ‘identity remix.’  It was coming from his chair’s radio, which meant it was already present in his personal databanks…but he could not recall having heard it before.  He turned it up, shifting until he was sitting literally at the edge of his seat, stretching out a claw to his control panel.  With a flick of his wrist, he began the song anew.

It was extraordinary.

Ratbat listened as the music blossomed, letting himself lay back across his berth as the sounds sought each corner of the room, filling them with unfamiliar and haunting melodies.  They clutched at him, and he shut his optics off, letting the frequencies vibrate through his electromagnetic field. 

It moved him.  He could recognize each individual sound: snatches of other music, snatches of voices, snatches of doors opening and shutting and laughter and vehicles flying by, all of it hopelessly intertwined to make what was undoubtedly music. 

Beautiful, beautiful music.

This was a new song.  He did not know how it had entered into his library any more than he remembered how the other, similar song had come to be there, but he recognized the style intrinsically and knew it was a perfect complement to what had come before.  He knew who had written it, as well as he knew the other song’s source—both supplied to him by his Communication’s drone.

“Get me the band ‘Assembly.’”  He spoke, sitting up, turning off the music to transmit a memo to his appointment advisor.  “Transport them here, treat them well, and bring them to me as soon as you can.”

Relaying his confirmation of the report back to the Communications drone, he deleted all traces of the transmission from his personal system and stood up, beckoning with a finger to the serving drone.  It produced a small, decorative purple energon container for him and bowed, about to back away. 

Ratbat did not let it.  His hand caught the drone by the wrist, halting it abruptly. 

It did not startle.

It couldn’t.  His drones were too well programmed to make noise or react with emotion.  Instead, it stopped and stared at him politely.  “Sir?” It queried, not even looking at its own trapped wrist.  “Is there something I can get for you, sir?”

“Initiate reboot program #48-B, delete all memory-tracks.  Voice command authorization Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, third nexus council.  Begin,”  he spoke firmly, confirming the procedure that wiped not only memory location pointers, but also the memories themselves.  There would be no record of anything that Ratbat had done tonight—from altering Optarus’ and Decimus’ plans, to reviewing the decryptions from that song—from any potential source.

“Si--”  It began, half-way into its acknowledgement before shut-down protocols overrode even that.  It produced a strange, static-like noise, powering off. 

That was not normal. 

He did not like that sound.  As far as he could recall, none of his drones had ever made such noises during power-down, as he’d been sure to have them maintenanced regularly. 

It would be best to have it serviced, nevertheless, and possibly sent back to the factory for a complete wipe as well.  Although the program he’d installed was meant to remove all traces of data, one could never be too careful in covering one’s tracks.  This one had been actually starting to anticipate his drink orders, besides.

That had been quaint.

That had been quaint, but also dangerous.  If it remembered that, there was no telling what else it might be storing.  With a full service memory wipe, there would be no one but himself to know what had transpired today.

No one but himself, and the communications drone. 

Quietly he considered that, reaching out to deactivate his holographic interface, shutting down his chair’s speakers for the night.  The communications drone had improved in its efficiency and ability to label important data over the course of its lifetime.  Ratbat had never forced it to delete its memory because of that.  Although it was technically more dangerous because of the information it contained, it could still decode more accurately, synthesize more effectively, and interface more quickly with his and other remote systems than it had when it had first arrived.  A memory-wipe would be safer, of course, but it could also be a waste, lest he lose out on the talent that he’d come to expect. 

It meant he ought to be more careful with it, sadly.  He would have to forgo his trips with it in public, and he would also have to restrict access to the transmission tower.  He had no desire to risk anyone tampering with it. 

That was too bad.  He’d had it equipped with its custom finish for a reason.  He enjoyed flaunting a varied entourage, especially one containing such a modern piece of delicate and expensive machinery.  He liked the looks the drone received from other diplomats, he liked the looks that it received from competitors, and he particularly liked the confusion the drone caused among the public who did not recognize what it was.   Taking the drone out had been like showing off new scroll-work on one’s armor.  It was a perk of his position, and one that he would be sad to do without.

However, there were other options.  Perhaps he could commission a special attendant from his factory to give them something to work on while the soldier drones were being delayed.

He could have it be a work of art, impressive, straight from the glory of a bygone era.  It could be a companion inspired by imagery of the Golden Age, setting new trends by mirroring old trends with a modern twist.  It could be a spokesmodel for his factory, as well, who could show what wonders drones were capable of while at his side, or remind the populace of how vast and superior the Cybertronian Empire could, and should, be.

This image in his mind was a stark contrast to the emotionless stare his serving drone was giving him.  Now finished rebooting, it did not move. 

It un-nerved him slightly, especially as lost in reverie as he had been.  Something was obviously not right with it, some loose belt inside making a harsh, off-kilter grinding noise that clashed with the pleasant electromagnetic motors from his chair.  It was not behaving according to its standard starting protocols.  It did not ask him if there was anything it could retrieve.

Instead, it reached a hand out, haltingly, toward Ratbat’s half-finished glass of energon. 

Perturbed, Ratbat slid the energon from its reach. 

It followed the glass, hand reaching out further, taking a step closer, head tilting as it let loose a terrible utterance of static-filled syllables in soft, contrasting baritone. 

Ratbat continued to stare.

Utterly repulsed by the noises that were coming from the unit, he could not process his situation enough to move.  The drone, however, did not seem to care.  Its other hand lifted, at last, both arms reaching toward the energon.  The hideous grinding inside it became worse. 

He’d never heard anything like it before. 

He didn’t intend to let it continue now. 

“Initiate deactivation code #49-A, full system shut-down.  Voice command authorization Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, third nexus council.  Begin!”

Nothing changed.

Ratbat’s alarm grew, and he repeated the phrase.  “Full system shut-down.  Begin!”   The drone’s hand encircled his glass, continuing onward despite the order to desist.  “Begin, now!”  It did not work. 

Instead, the drone screeched more gibberish at him, slowly drawing its hand back, slowly crunching the delicate receptacle of energon as it moved, still staring at Ratbat even while broken glass stuck in the servos of its fingers and purple fluid trailed to the floor.  It dropped the flute, and did not flinch at the sudden crash against the marble. 

“Begin.  Begin!  Security!” 

Ratbat was trapped.

Ratbat was also terrified.

The drone was reaching toward him, now, its broken servos dripping from where glass shards were caught.  He grimaced, as a single drop splashed down upon his thigh and black fingers brushed his torso plating.  He could not believe this.  He would not stand for it.

He was repulsed, horrified, and too stunned to cry out again…

But that did not stop him from grabbing the drone’s wrist, twisting expertly, and shoving the hand into the incinerator on the side of his chair. 

The drone screamed.

Ratbat shuddered.

Then he kicked it once, and then again, holding the wrist in place until there wasn’t any hand left at the end of it.  He kicked again and again, perplexed and amazed that the drone stood there and allowed him to continue kicking, barraged by its over-modulated shrieks while his exquisitely molded heels dug into its torso, ripping panels off and tearing wires loose.   This was the one place where Ratbat had not expected to find danger…

But that did not mean that he was unprepared for it.  Without a sound the plating on his arms shifted, and a concealed knife found its way into his grasp.  The drone still wasn’t retreating. 

He wouldn’t give it a chance. 

Instead, he plunged the blade deep within the crevice in the torso plating, putting the full force of his extended arm into it, shifting his weight in the chair to use his seat as leverage while he twisted the blade.

The screaming stopped.

Slowly, the lit panels of softly glowing energy dimmed on the drone’s faceplates, and the creature slumped onto the floor.

Ratbat stared, still stunned for a long, long moment.

Then he kicked the drone once more. 

It hadn’t been aware that it was broken. 

He’d have its programming looked at, of course, and have each component dissected for traces of tampering, but he knew they would find nothing.  It hadn’t been attacking him on purpose.  He knew that.  If someone had reprogrammed the drone, either for assassination or for spying, it would not have reached for the glass first.

That…was interesting.

A shiver suddenly ran through him, unable to shake the much-too-dissonant stammering the drone had made, remembering the shuddering shriek of its pain and the way it had tilted its head brokenly. 

He should not think about the news reports that called drones soulless, sparkless beings.  He should not think about the lack of expression on its face, mindlessly trying to perform what it thought were its duties.  He should not think on this, at all.

“Send a cleanup crew to my Leisure Suite,” he spoke, opening his personal communicator, leaving claw marks on the molded metal.  “Mechs, not drones.”   His voice was firm and calm, exactly as he’d programmed it to be despite the fact he was shaking: serenity in the face of danger, whether he wanted it or not.  “I’ll be in my recharge chambers.”

He needed to get his mind off this. 

He stood up, and toed the drone away from where it had collapsed, shuddering as it rolled over into a heap.  His knife was still sticking out from the carcass.

He did not pull it out.

Instead, he stepped over the drone, and hurried from the room.

He needed to do something, and he needed to do something, now.  Something relaxing.  Something distracting. 

Something preferably not related to drones.

One was already outside of his Leisure Suite, however.  It blocked his passageway as he exited, coming to a stop in the hallway outside of his chamber, its arms full of data pads.  He nearly jumped as it looked up.  “Sir,”  it said, and tilted its head, plainly confused to be seeing him out here.

Uninterested in dealing with this right now, Ratbat stepped back. 

“Sir, would you like your messages delivered elsewhere?” It continued, its head straightening.  It did not make a static-laced sound.  It did not shriek. 

Ratbat was safe.

He knew that.

He knew he was safe here, in the hallways outside of his rooms.  He knew he was in his tower with some of the most advanced security programs and some of the best-trained guards.  He knew there was nothing to fear. 

He was certain he was unafraid.

“I will take them now,” he demanded, attempting to convince himself, and stepped forward to accept the data pads from the drone.  It handed them over without complaint, and bowed.

“Will there be anything else?”  it asked.

“No,” Ratbat replied.

“Of course, sir,” it said, and turned to retrace its steps back down the hallway.

Ratbat, quietly, calmly, and slowly, leaned against the wall and shut his optics off.  He stayed there for a long, long moment, cycling air in through his intakes and out through his exhaust, over, and over again.

That had gone well. 

That had been exactly what he’d needed, right now.  Like falling…he’d pulled himself up to a more terrifying height and faced his fears.  He’d needed to see a fully functional, correctly operating drone, and he’d needed to interact with it without anything going wrong. 

Now, he needed to disappear himself, and not interact with anything else until morning. 

Chapter Text

As the end of 33 cycles approached, he started to grow apprehensive.

It would be time to return to the docking closet soon.  Currently, he had no desire to leave the tasks he had begun, which was causing conflict with the recharge programming he could not override.  His distress was growing, and it was growing greater as his clock was winding down.  When the 33 cycles were over, he would have no choice.  He would have to return to his docking closet.

He didn’t want to.

It was unpleasant.

That unpleasantness prompted an emotion.

He’d been considering emotions as he worked on his third song, and ‘apprehension’ was a recent entry on the list for further investigation.  After his experience at the Opera house, he’d been documenting every feeling he thought he had experienced, saving them for study.  If something had affected a change within him, he intended to analyze it.

That was what he did.

He had been programmed for comparative analysis, and considered it important to record all aberrant behavior that he exhibited.

That which he was experiencing now could easily have been emotion.

Emotions were states in which sensations were relayed to him.  They appeared to occur in connection to selfishness or in connection to sympathy, when they occurred at all.  When there were great changes in him or great changes in others around him, for example, he was able to note the unlabeled data streams that elicited his response.  Certain music brought him enjoyment.  The opera had made him sad.

Many emotions were still absent, however.  Invariably, he knew he would have to experience them in order to understand them, but most seemed hopelessly out of reach.  It was unlikely he would find great changes while he was locked in his tower. 

However, this was not what currently concerned him.  He was not perturbed by the emotions so much as he was perturbed by what could have evoked them.  Emotions were merely symptoms; his ability to feel did not spawn from the emotions themselves.

When he looked at the trends in data, it was likely that his first ‘great change’ had come from music.

Music had inspired him to understand loss, apprehension, and loneliness.  They were gifts engendered from the opera, joining the desire, curiosity, and boredom that had been present before that.

They had been present since the first time he’d heard Assembly’s song.

He was acutely aware of it, still, catching replays of both it and his remix at an average of four million times per day.  Even now, long after its initial discovery, he still found himself cataloging it erroneously, allowing it to play through the tower’s speakers once per cycle.  He was additionally aware, having transmitted and relayed the messages, that the composer was scheduled to meet with Ratbat by the end of the decacyle.  This caused a wave of unidentified emotion to sweep over him, as it did each time he thought about it.  The emotion felt like apprehension.  It also felt like curiosity, desire, and strangely also like loneliness. 

This puzzled him.

The layering of emotions was strange, and complex, and uncomfortable, but it also reminded him of how dissonant notes could add a striking richness to even the most melodic of pieces.  All parts were needed, to obtain the balance of depth.  If it lacked a single frequency, the experience would not be the same.

That knowledge was worth cataloging, also. 

He did so, simultaneously shuffling five other intercepted transmissions into appropriate folders, flagging an incoming message, and copying three files for secondary processing before re-routing them along.  One voice-clip was dumped into his special folder, and sorted carefully by length and tone and rhythm.  He had gotten faster at processing his samples, more efficiently able to catch them in-between performing his programmed duties.  He had no other choices, now.  He would not be able to make samples, first-hand, until Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, third nexus council, rescinded the order for him to remain in his tower, undisturbed.

This would have been more of a hindrance if there was not already so much for him to collect.

While connected to the tower, he was given near-unlimited access to all of Ratbat Holdings systems.  He could borrow processing power from any number of programs, and re-order their input to correspond with output from him.  He could communicate between any employees or peer into their records.  He had access to unlimited data to peruse at his desire, to sift and sort through for items of importance or samples for his songs.  Each solar cycle, there was more to find. 

He could have labeled that ‘exciting,’ and possibly have been correct. 

New content was ‘exciting’ to him, because of its potential.  It pleased him to correctly categorize a file, and pass it on.  It pleased him to be able to do this quickly, efficiently, and accurately.  It pleased him to complete his purpose as it was intended, and it pleased him additionally to locate samples on the side.

It did not please him to be consistently aware of the clock.

Its rhythm was his pulse-beat, the master control of all data inflow and out.  Each cycle of the clock was one new bit of information transferred, one positive or negative voltage, one ‘high’ or ‘low,’ a zero or a one.  A frequency.  Sometimes he tried to catch the motion of the clock, itself, to capture that, to sample it….

…And yet, now, it was counting down the time until his forced exclusion, and he did not find that pleasing in the least.  Very shortly, he would be forced to enter his docking closet for three cycles.  It was not an unreasonable duration, but it was three cycles away from his connection.  Three cycles alone, without the ability to create.  Three cycles in darkness, without the world at his input nodes.  Three cycles without control.

He did not like that.

He did not like it at all, but he did not have to.

This time there was something he could do about it.  He did not have to succumb.

Defying his inability to reprogram himself, he took initiative in a different way. 

He would not have control when he was in his docking closet, but he still had control now.  He could, with little effort, obtain enough information to satisfy his processing during his time away. 

Quietly, he sought out three cycle’s worth of music to download and placed them in his databanks one by one. 

He specifically sought out music he did not ordinarily have access to, selecting based on richness of waveform alone.  Most often, the music which appealed to him came from two floors down, second corridor, Ratbat’s Leisure Suite.  It was originally forbidden for him to access any of the systems in that room, but the over-ride from Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, third nexus council, allowed a foray into any database that might include a file of interest. 

He had found many, many files of interest in his owner’s personal collection. 

Now, he uploaded them.

He had no vocal processor, but for this purpose his speakers were exquisite amplifiers of sound: top quality, able to reproduce a song with clarity and near-zero distortion, even from music taken with low sampling rates.  The music he uploaded from the personal files of Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, third nexus council, was never music taken with low sampling rates. 

They were originals or second copies, and he desired to listen to them out loud, understanding them as they were meant to be perceived.   He wanted to hear more.

He wanted to find another song that changed him.

He wanted to stay out of the docking closet, too...

But this, at least, was a reasonable compromise.

This, at least, would give him something to do.

Chapter Text

Megatronus stared out across the roof, looking over the chopped horizon of grayish factory buildings splattered underneath the brighter grayish sky.  Across the distance, he could see a transport shuttle lifting off from a manufacturing port, setting out across the great wastelands that separated the industrial zone from Kaon’s central city.  A black trail followed in its wake, marking its passage for moments after it had vanished out of sight before dispersing, slowly, adding to the overall grayness of an already gray atmosphere.

It was hot outside.

He could feel the heat reflecting off the rooftops, smothering him, causing every intake to be ragged as his engine tried its best to stay cool.  Never had it needed to work so hard, before.  Never, until coming to the factory, had he been in the midst of so much raw warmth, somewhere he could see the open sky, somewhere that wasn’t full of cold and shadows or the frigid depths of mines in empty space. 

Here on the roof it was always searing, amplified by the oven of the factory with its huge, whirring machines.  This was, literally, the most miserable place to be.

Miserable, perhaps, for anyone but him.

It made Megatronus smile as he strode out across the flat expanse of rooftop, selecting somewhere shaded from the worst of the heat along the outer rim of the facility.  He set down his battered radio, cycled down his engine, and sat down against the lip of the roof’s ledges, looking upwards through the folds of smog.

The sun was up there, shining through it all.

He could see it directly without need of polarizing filters, a bright circle peering through the poisonous dust.  It was smudged and it was slowly roasting everything it touched, but it was daylight and it still felt like a privilege that few would ever enjoy. 

Quietly, he removed a cube from storage and uncapped it, sensing the electric tang of liquid energon, raw, barely stable, and strong enough to fuel his sizeable engines.  He reached out toward his radio, and flicked the ancient manual switch on the side, relaxing backward to savor his cube while the languid tunes of oldies warbled through a tiny pair of speakers, static-free. 

This radio had been through too much.  It was battered, and stained, and out of place wherever it went, but it wasn’t complete scrap, yet.  

Just like him.

Like the radio, he was still going, still relentlessly determined in his duty, still picking up on signals around himself and trying desperately to filter out the slag.

Granted, the radio could only catch five or six stations outside of Kaon these days, and even less this far into the manufacturing sector.  Few companies had use for the low-range broadcast spectrum that the cheap, old radios used, especially when there were satellites and transmission towers that relayed sound around the world.  No one had ‘need’ of standard frequencies in the industrial zone, where no one was supposed to be listening because they were either working or were rich enough to have the satellite uplinks already installed as part of their upgrades.

Out here, his radio was growing obsolete. 

Back in the underground, however, it could still pick up a hundred songs. 

On a clear night with the right equipment, there’d be anything from classical music to contemporary tunes, old war-stories, or announcers grandly describing the local arena match.  One could hear the audio from vidcasts, too, filtering down from the cheaper stations on the surface which transmitted sound and light on different frequencies, or one could hear chatter in the morning from security bots making the rounds.  Wavebands were free to anyone who could get the cheap equipment that could access them, broadcasting religions, politics, and racing stats for betting. 

When he’d first come to Kaon, he’d spent all night listening, catching up on what the world above the surface plates was like, just trying to understand life in the city after living in the mines.  He’d puzzled over it, frequently, turning from station to station, imagining how it felt up where the sun was shining and the upper-class were living out their lives.

Now, the sun shone on him.

However, after so long, he’d grown to appreciate the darkness.

As if sensing his thoughts, a shadow passed by overhead.  He had only moments to recognize the giant transport, to appreciate the immensity of its engines before appreciating anything was not possible anymore. 

It was too close. 

Air blasted around him, shrieking through the transport’s giant turbines, whipping dust and grime and tiny rocks across his frame or trailing swirls through the visible smog of daylight.  It rumbled, persistent, deep, vibrating the very material of the roof with deafening levels of sound, flying low but slowly gaining altitude.  As if by habit, he covered the lip of his energon cube, baring his teeth at the transport as it washed black smoke over him and trundled on toward the distant spires of Kaon. 

In an instant, it was gone.

He watched after it, dusting himself off quietly, knowing there were smears left that would never really fade without good polish but not having a reason to care.  There was no point in trying to keep shiny, no point in buffing, no point in looking good for any reason other than to shimmer in the lights of the arena--and he had no need of shimmering, right now. 

The transport slowly moved out of sight over the edge of the manufacturing zone, and he coughed the dust out of his intakes in good riddance. 

His radio, however, did not recover as quickly.

“Come on.”  Growling, Megatronus gave it a flick, aggravated by the sudden static that continued to play.  He ran a large, clawed finger over the dial, switching the stations, waiting for something to come through, knowing how sometimes the anti-grav of large cargo ships could throw off sensors in the dial.  When that didn’t work, he picked it up and shook it once, hard, hoping to reset any imbalances.  To be certain he’d tried everything, he even held it upside-down.

Nothing.

Indelicately, he flipped the switch to shut it off and on again, listening and adjusting knobs to no avail, tilting it to improve reception, wondering if his radio had finally bit the dust….

And exclaiming, pleased, when suddenly an up-beat rhythm started blaring from it once again. 

It was relieving. 

He hadn’t expected it to matter so much.  He hadn’t expected that he’d miss something that he’d held on to for so long, because there were so few things that were a permanent addition to his life.  This was one.  This was one, and he had no intention of letting it die.

“You really ought to be more careful with machines…”  A voice seemed to agree with him, coming from the stairwell nearby.  “Especially the old ones.” 

Glancing up, Megatronus's optics searched the source out, wondering how long he’d been watched without his knowledge.

He didn’t have to wonder long.

The spark technician stood, not far away, observing Megatronus from underneath the cover of the roof-hut where the stairs went back inside.  His blue optics glowed steadily, noticeable even against the tepid brightness of the day, shuttering once as if they were not used to seeing the sun, at all.

They probably weren’t.

“Come out here if you want to berate me, tech,” he offered, patting a spot nearby, “Or else go back inside.”

“Out…there?”  The technician’s blue lenses narrowed, glancing up towards the ominous haze and putting one hand out into the filtered rays of sunlight.  “My sensors indicate a reduced quality of air, possibly rated at toxic levels.  This zone is not safe for long-term exposure.”

“Just come join me.  You won’t die, today.”

Cautiously, the spark technician took a single step forward.  He stood there for a minute, tentative, waiting, looking around as if to confirm Megatronus’s assessment.  His polished teal stripes glared at odds with the dusty charcoal of the sky.  “It is not customary,” he finally sighed, filtration covers sliding into place over his vents but walking to join Megatronus, nonetheless.

“Because you’re not accustomed to it,” Megatronus agreed, offering his hand to the other in a gesture of good will.  “But it is daylight, scientist.  Diluted and filthy as it is, it is still a privilege that most Cybertronians will never enjoy.”

The technician took the hand and sat awkwardly, knees drawn up to torso-plating.  It was apparent that he was out of place as much as Megatronus on the rooftop, but that didn’t seem to stop him from staying, or from considering the information offered.  His large, blue optics stared out at the clouds of dust and moisture, watching the haze drift through the heat as if seeing it for the first time.  “Is that privilege the reason why you come out here?” 

“No.”  Megatronus grinned, leaning back against the lattice of the wall.  “I come out to listen to my radio where no one bothers me.”  He extended his cube in offering, watching with a smirk as the meaning of his words sunk in.

The technician looked up, startled.  “I’m…I’m sorry.  I didn’t realize.”  Shaking his teal head, he put his hand out, fingertips wavering only inches from the cube as if he could not decide whether it would be more polite to accept it or to leave Megatronus alone like requested.  “I tried to find you on your break-time, and they said that you’d come up here, and then you said I should join you…”  He looked down at the liquid in the glass, watching it intently, his optics specifically avoiding Megatronus’s.  “Should I go inside?”

Laughing softly, Megatronus pushed the glass hexahedron into the scientist‘s hand.  “Only if you want to.”  The music on the station changed, the beat slowing into mournful melody as the next song played. 

Slowly, the technician’s optics shifted, glancing toward the radio as if the change in tune was a welcome distraction.  He stared at it for a moment, silent, but he did not get up to leave.  “I don‘t.  I want to talk to you,” he said instead, his fingers clutching tightly around the cube.

“Oh?”  Megatronus replied, encouraging but not trying to lead. 

“I want to know why you came here.” 

“To the roof?” 

“No.”  Shaking his head, the technician took a sip.  “No, I mean to this factory.”  His large, bulky feet shifted nervously, betraying his continued uncertainty.  “I know it is not easy to find work.  I don’t get out much, but I know.  I even know it’s harder at our factory than others, because of what we make.  Because of the secrets that we need to guard….”  He took another sip, clutching the cube closely as if the sun would burn it, too, if he wasn’t careful.  “So I did not know what to think when you came, asking questions.”

Wary, Megatronus reached out to steady the cube, but stopped instantly when the technician started to flinch.  “Is there something wrong with that?”  He did not like the way the technician refused to meet his optics, as if there were some other cause to his discomfort besides the sun.

“I don’t know.”  There was another shake of his head, before he repeated himself: “I don’t know.  I thought that looking at your spark would tell me what I wanted to know, but all it did was make me more confused.”  He paused, and Megatronus frowned, still not having been told the results of that reading and not sure where this conversation was headed right now.  “I’ve…seen where you come from.  I’ve seen you with the other workers, too.  They don’t see anything different in you, but I…do.  I did, even before I took those readings, and…”

“What did you learn?”  Calculating the odds of what the technician was getting at, he reached out again to save his cube from its impending crushing.

The technician’s optics followed his hand as it set down on the cube, but he did not relinquish it.  “I think I understand what you are,” he whispered, blue optics looking away as if ashamed to meet Megatronus‘s gaze.  “What you are capable of.” 

A shiver went up Megatronus’s spinal struts.

This was just what he had feared, and it was just what he’d not wanted to hear.  He’d hoped the conversation could stay casual, or turn humorous, or go any direction but toward what he was capable of.  He knew what he was capable of.  He was capable of doing what needed to be done, at any cost to himself or to those around him, even if that meant taking lives.  That was what he’d done, every day.

He known that the technician had the means of finding out he’d tampered with the processor chips.   He’d feared that, because of his work here, there might come a moment when he would have to get rid of the spark tech.  He’d even realized that the clock was ticking down to that inevitability, but he’d not believed that it would come so soon, so suddenly.

He’d been hoping it would not come at all. 

When he’d made his decision to infiltrate the drone factory, he’d considered the best possible outcome and the worst.  He’d accepted that he’d have to hurt others, and he’d justified that doing so wouldn’t be much different from what he normally did for a living.

He’d realized that. 

Choosing to do away with other gladiators in the ring versus choosing to do away with an unarmed scientist, however…

…it was different than he wanted it to be.

The spark tech did not seem to register the threat.  His hand was still under Megatronus’s, holding onto the cube, pressing against the glass.  Blue optics were still locked with his, entranced, uncertain, excited, while the volatile energon was clutched, suspended between them, so close to spilling over the technician’s frame.

Megatronus was painfully aware that it would only take a spark to set it off.  He was painfully aware that now, out here, alone, there would never be a better chance.

“I know about this.”  A thick teal hand was thrust between them, a tiny chip held up to Megatronus’s face, the very incrimination he had been expecting.   “And I believe you’re brilliant.” 

“You….what?”  The glass was suddenly in Megatronus’s hand, alone, and he was staring, utterly confused. 

“You wrote this coding, didn’t you?  The open-ended coding in the processor chip?”

“Y…es,” he answered, tentatively, having expected accusations at this point instead of further questioning.

What had just happened?

Was the technician somehow on his side?  Had he been aware, the entire time, of what Megatronus was trying to do, or did he still think Megatronus a spy? A saboteur?  He did not understand.  His mind was still reeling, still trying to work out ways to dispose of the spark technician without getting caught, still trying to think on what his next move would be.  The technician, meanwhile, had moved on without him, leaving him without a coherent response.

Megatronus recognized the chip, of course, as one of several he’d been bringing to the factory to test out on the company drone.  It was the same one that the technician had taken from him, days ago, and the same one he’d been hoping would end up unceremoniously in the trash compactor.  The programming on it was still incomplete, but it was open-ended for a reason…

And namely, that reason was so that he could fill in activation codes at some future point, when he had finally worked them out.

That should have been suspicious, not brilliant.

“I tried it out.”  The other spoke, sitting forward towards him as if he’d already forgotten the quality of air, the tension, and the sunlight.  “It needed some corrections, of course, but I booted it up in one of the new fighting-models, and it works…”

“It works?”

It couldn’t possibly work, at this stage.  Not if he’d left the coding unfinished like that. 

“It does.”  The scientist nodded. “Without the default variable of a command in place, the open-ended coding lets the drone supply the variable, themselves.  It gives them a sort of mild autonomy, instead of supplying them only with base instructions.”  He glanced down at the chip, then back up, tapping it for emphasis.  “Do you understand what I am saying?  They can make their own decisions, with this, so long as those decisions aren’t in conflict with an order…”

“Wait.”  Megatronus’s processor was reeling, lost in what the tech had said, still waiting for the part where he was told to leave the factory for treason.  It wasn’t coming. 

Instead, suddenly there was this talk of choices?  Autonomy?  Drones, who could give themselves commands if there wasn’t a previously assigned variable? 

It was ludicrous. 

The only reason that the variable was unassigned was that he was still waiting on the variable, on some way to sense the spark frequency…and technically, as soon as he figured it out, it was supposed to make the drones obey him, so he could have them fight for other’s freedoms. 

Would they even know how to take their own?

Would they know what freedom was?

Well. 

It was possible.

Perhaps they would, if they’d experienced it just a little.  He didn’t know, because he hadn’t considered this before.  He’d never thought on the drones as anything but a threat, or a tool.  He’d never thought on them as anything more than what they’d been built to do…

…and maybe in doing that, he’d been committing the same fallacy that his own government was committing against him. 

Maybe he’d dismissed them, as he’d been dismissed, and maybe that was exactly what he shouldn’t have been doing.  Maybe the belief that one’s form designated one’s function had become so strong over the millennia that even he had fallen for it.  He’d looked at drones and seen only a means to an end.

But that was what the drone debates had been about, wasn’t it?  Spark imprints?  If drones could even be considered Cybertronian, or if they were just machines?  If there was any reason to believe that owning them was wrong?

And that was what he’d taken this job to learn about, too.  He’d come to find some way to stop drones from ruining the only life he’d been able to build for himself.  He’d come to sabotage the factory, in whatever way he could. 

But maybe he could do this, in another way.  Maybe he could sow doubts about ‘spark imprints,’ or seed fear about the improper use of sparks.  Maybe he could convince the public that drones were autonomous, and that they weren’t what they’d been marketed as.  Maybe he could cause the drones to evolve with only a little nudge from the chips that he’d been changing, and use them as allies instead of as tools…

…but had a drone ever displayed even the slightest hint of wanting that?

Had a drone ever desired anything?

Could they?

That, he didn’t know.

“Show me.”  He said, pulling the other to his feet.  “I think I need to see this for myself.”

Maybe he was crazy, even to be thinking this. 

Maybe he was crazy to believe that it was something he could do.

Maybe.

But he was not any crazier, now, than he’d been in coming here in the first place, and not any more crazy, now, than the spark technician who was sharing the idea with him.  If they were going to be crazy, then they could at least try out this ‘being crazy’ together, and he’d have his opportunity to work in the open on drones.  He’d have the chance to actually change something.

Maybe it would never amount to anything, and he’d be back at square one.

But maybe, just maybe…

…this could work.

Chapter Text

In the closet, he found himself staring at the stub-ends of his arms while High Strung’s 4^th Minuet (incomplete) was entering its third stanza.

This piece, it had noticed, contained entrancing partials, each chord omitting only a single aspect of the base frequency of the note.  The omissions were sporadic and uneven in a way that indicated an underlying purpose or message, but on the initial play through he could not determine what that was.

Instead, he was considering hands.

He recalled the way the driver on the roof had stared at the terminal stumps on his forelimbs, and he compared the reaction with many similar responses on his outing.  Every mech, he noted, had possessed opposable digits capable of picking up objects and interacting with their environments.  Their servos were designed for many purposes, adaptable to holding a glass of energon, picking up heavy equipment, providing comfort to a counterpart, or steadying balance on unstable pathways.  

He was not capable of such activities.

He had been designed solely for one purpose, and he was specialized to perform that purpose with superior results.  His programming was optimized for data processing and recognition algorithms, as well as spectrum and frequency domain analysis.  His computations were not performed additively, but logarithmically, to facilitate a faster transition of oscillatory functions.  His processor was connected straight to his sensors and I/O terminals, so he could work directly with input without having to waste valuable time shunting information back and forth between programs and data cache. 

Performing tasks related to information processing was pleasing to him.  He had been built for it.

Thinking on tasks that required hands, however, caused an emotion similar to discomfort.  He did not understand how to coordinate fingers.  The manipulation of such complicated digits was completely alien to him, because he lacked the necessary programming for it. He preferred not having hands, because he would not know what to do with them.

This made him visually distinct.  Not…Cybertronian.

Yet he was from Cybertron.  He had been manufactured on the inner surface of the planet, and he had been given unique programming and unique functions.  As a custom unit, he had also been provided with a unique spark imprint, a unique somatotype, and a unique paint application.  He was unique.  He was individual.

He did not mind this.  He did not ‘regret’ his lack of flexible appendages, because he had specialized connections that could interface with any Cybertronian device. 

He used them, now, feeling the millions of tiny pin-points at the tips of his arms brush against the surface of the wall, sensing out the input node of the communications monitor.  The microscopic receptors found it, eagerly, and with a jolt they sampled variable voltages that ran through the device, sending a stream of waveforms to his processor.  Their amplitudes were safe, well within his personal tolerances.

With the data from the song to consider, and nothing else to do, he decided to jack in.

The million fibrous wires covered over the monitor’s plug, extending or retracting to fit the indentation perfectly.  Information suddenly flooded his systems, and he supplied equivalent currents to the device in turn, acting as an invisible component, becoming a part of the system.

This was far better than hands. 

Before, when waiting out other cycles in the closet, he had not tried this.  It had been understood that, while in the closet, he was not meant to engage the communications monitor except in an emergency.  He had been forbidden to use it. 

However, he had not been forbidden to connect to the communications monitor, and explore its small and limited functions for himself. 

They were…disappointing. 

The monitor provided only a fractional extension of his own processing power, with simple programs and no external data storage.  By testing voltages, he could turn on the monitor and cause any picture to appear, but only so long as the picture was one supplied by himself. 

He did not have many of those.

Its speakers were inferior to his, as well.

However, it was connected via hardline to various central nodes throughout the company, which made sense given that it was a communications monitor.  He could…communicate, if he desired to.

He did not.

What he wanted to do was explore, to locate other instances of frequencies similar to the Minuet.  This monitor was not as extensively networked within the building as his transmission tower interface, but it did have entry to many key channels, including one with external reception.  He could, he realized, gain access to communications made by Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, third nexus council, and utilize that to gain further information.

He did.

“Is there just the one?”  He heard the Senator asking.

Surprised to find the channel occupied, he considered pulling back.  It would be considerably more difficult to pass data underneath the bandwidth of another conversation without causing interference of some kind. However, pulling back would mean he’d have no external access, and nothing to do. 

He could instead, he reasoned, simply wait for the transmission to conclude, and then continue without incident.  That would be the most efficient use of his time.

“Yes, sir.  Just this one that will come to speak with you.  He says that he’s the one you want to talk to, anyway…”  A quick voice-match identified the second speaker as Redirect, Time Management Executive, Secondary rank.  “…the one that wrote the song.”

“Can you provide a confirmation of this?” the Senator asked, a steady, strange hollow tapping clearly indicating the click of talons on a steel armchair.  Finding this of interest, he sampled the sound.

“Er…yes, sir.  Popular search indicates that he does all the writing, while the other performing members are merely experts on their instruments, respectively.  He says he wants to talk to you, Sir.  Tomorrow.”

There was a long pause on the Senator’s end, and the slightest twinge of voltage modulations in the waveform, something that the drone had not encountered before.  It was not comfortable.

“Did he, now.”  Ratbat murmured.  “How convenient.”

There was a second spike in voltage on the line that the drone was hacking, sharp, and approaching his tolerance levels.  He initiated a trace on the anomaly, calculating an upward trend of voltage spikes that would cause him to disconnect in .5 millicycles.  He did not wish to disconnect, but he was not certain he was capable of filtering amplitudes of such magnitude without damage to his inputs.  He was not even sure where they were coming from.

“Then convey to him my acceptance of his offer and place that meeting in my schedule.”  There was a new tapping, of talons over a keypad.    “Say nothing more, this line is compromised.”

“Of course sir.”

The second line cut out, and a third spike in voltage shot a jolt of pain through the tiny, delicate pins.  Unaccustomed to the feeling, the drone immediately disengaged.

It hurt.

It hurt, and he raised the tip of his arm to check for singed wiring, finding a few blackened pins in the shape of the monitor connection.  The pain did not recede, and neither did the growing sense of disorientation. 

He’d skirted the edges of disobeying an order.

He’d connected into Ratbat Holding’s private line without express permission, and he had been caught.

He had not even been aware that that could happen. 

No one had monitored him previously, but previously, he’d not been observing active calls directly through a hardline.  Quickly, he calculated the amount of sensitivity a program would require to detect his interference, and assessed the probability that he could have been traced.

It was high.

“Communications Drone.”  The monitor in front of him lit up, displaying the too-close helm of Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, third nexus council.  With a dawning emotion that he soon labeled as ‘horror,’ the communications drone in question realized his speakers were still on.

High Strung’s 4^th Minuet (incomplete) was entering its final stanza, blaring with painfully exquisite clarity in the silence of the tiny closet, while his owner looked on. 

Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, third nexus council, was wearing an expression that he did not recognize.  Unable to speak, the music continued playing, beautiful, reaching a crescendo of blissful harmony…

Before it suddenly cut out, silenced, stopping at the last unfinished bar, the only recording of the final symphony the great composer wrote. 

“Report to my Leisure Suite immediately.”  Ratbat frowned, and disconnected, leaving the small closet quiet once again.

The communications drone stood there, completely silent for over one hundred cycles of its internal clock.

It was a drone.  It had not complied completely with its programming.  It had been caught.

But it could not disobey a direct order from Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, third nexus council.

It did not know how.

Chapter Text

Cybertron was dying.

It was a slow death, eating away at the core where no one could see it, all the more insidious a tarnish for the golden veneer that it hid beneath.  It had been happening for eons, stability turning into stagnation, truth turning into memory, traditions turning into law. The tide of its change had the gravity of a star—pulling, inexorably, toward the inevitable conclusion.

He’d waited for it.

Of course, Cybertron seemed stable and flourishing on the surface.  Its intergalactic trustworthiness was still highly rated, its products still sought-out and well-made, its art still highly advanced and intricate, but Ratbat knew how far down the rust extended.  Each sunset, while he stood and looked out over Kaon‘s surface, he counted off another cycle as he ruminated on the changes, admiring the colors of the fading light reflecting over buildings that he owned.

Only a mech created many millennia ago would be able to see the difference, and there were not many of those left.

There weren’t many left, but he’d been gifted with the knowledge of his forebearers.

He saw the tarnish, every day.

There were more Cybertronians than there were jobs.  There was no surface of the planet that was not covered in cities, extending so far down that lifts no longer reached the bottom.  There were virus scares, and protests, and localized economic collapses. Some technologies had stopped progressing. Some technologies had been lost.  He’d not needed to get a hardware upgrade in several cycles, which indicated just how stagnant they’d become.

His progenitor had known that this was coming.  So had his creator before him, and one more generation beyond.  They’d seen, and they’d amassed wealth enough to survive the coming crisis, and concocted plans enough to see that their legacy would make it through.

He, himself, had been the culmination of these plans, and from the date of his activation he had known what he was meant to do.

However, he’d not have gotten where he was today if he’d been merely willing to observe the fall of Cybertron.  He intended to delay the inevitable as long as possible, preserve what worthwhile items he could, and enjoy the time remaining to him.

The darkness wasn’t coming just yet.  

Recent occurrences were upsetting him, however.  Not every venture was going precisely to plan, and most of the ventures that were failing seemed to be centered on drones.

The drone technology had seemed so promising at first, with nearly endless possibilities.  It had caused incredible jumps in science, creating artificial intelligence that could reason and obey adaptively instead of having to be externally controlled.  They’d been called ‘intuitive machinery,’ and he’d been impressed with their deductive capabilities, their versatility, and their potential. They could re-organize a room without disposing of anything valuable.  They could take orders at a restaurant. They could, as he’d been told at his factory, even differentiate a friend from a foe, and it pleased him to think on their applications as bodyguards. He’d been certain that once he had shown how effective they could be in combat, he would have an immense trade to set up with arms merchants and civil states across the galaxy.  

He’d known there would be some setbacks, of course.  

He’d known, for instance, that eventually drones would put a significant number of Cybertron’s already strained workforce out of jobs.  He’d known that eventually he’d have to wrestle with certain political ramifications about what essentially were copied sparks.  He’d known that eventually he’d need to set up uprisings so that the new drone forces could quell them quickly in convenient ‘public demonstrations,’ and he’d known that deaths would eventually result.

Those figures did not bother him—those were acceptable losses

Cybertron’s over-crowding was a political agenda all on its own,  one that he’d been working for years to rectify. He’d placed as many sanctions as he could on third-class mechs who wanted to pass into the upper-zones, to keep all of the dregs of society contained.  Those with skills that could not easily be programmed would be safe, occupied in jobs that require creativity or specialization. Those who performed work better suited to machines, on the other hand, would be replaced by them, and would starve slowly in the Underground, beneath the surface plates where none would have to witness their demise.  

It would be ugly for a few stellar cycles, but at the end of it?

Only the best of Cybertronians would remain, and they’d have the drones to do the hard work or to sell to neighboring planets for a profit.  Artists could spend their time perfecting their art, scientists could focus on discoveries, and engineers could work on the innovations of the future, without any of them having to worry about where their next cube of energon was coming from.  He could, in essence, single-handedly save Cybertron by using drones.

Drones, however, could not facilitate Cybertron’s salvation while they were malfunctioning.

He’d sent the broken serving unit to a specialist, and they’d reported major circuit burn-outs in several sectors of its processor.  

On top of that, his factory was still tied up until the Senate vote, unable to produce a single unit until there was majority pass.

On top of that , he’d caught his own communications drone spying on his recent transmission.  

These drawbacks were upsetting him.

They were particularly upsetting because he didn’t know how to fix them, and because he was stuck dealing with them anyway.

He had not wanted to interfere with the communications drone’s delicate, intricate programming, because he was fearful that a reset that would diminish its performance.  He’d enjoyed the precision with which it identified problematic transmissions to his analysis team, knowing that its high rate of success was because of its ability to compare data it found with data it had previously found.  He really, really didn’t want to hinder that right now.

With the Senate vote approaching he needed it, besides.  His communications drone was a major advantage. It had been instrumental in dealing with the matter of Decimus and Optarus.  It had keyed him in to several small coups among his own associates and had managed to decode the layers underneath the troubling Assemble remix, which no other encryption expert had been able to do.  He was an incredible piece of machinery, worth the small fortune that Ratbat had spent….

But Ratbat couldn’t tolerate machinery listening in on his calls when it wasn’t supposed to.

It was, eerily, like having one’s data-pad suddenly become curious about what one was writing on it.  

He’d not even considered that eavesdropping from a docking closet was something a drone could do, and as much as that capability was something he should later exploit, it left him dealing with the ramifications of its actions now.  Did he let it keep its memories and continue performing at peak capacity, or did he wipe its memories and rid it of potentially problematic behaviors?

Senator Ratbat stared at the blue drone standing in the doorway of his suite and gestured for it to join him by the full-panel window-screens.

It did so, staring at him lifelessly, showing no hint of personality.

He’d wanted it to have no personality.

He stared back for a moment, wondering if that had changed or if the actions it had taken were a fluke, waiting to see if it would behave aberrantly if he watched it long enough.  He had ordered it to report, it had reported, and now it was awaiting orders as he’d specified. No unusual patterns emerged from its programming. It was a machine .  

It was not supposed to be spontaneous.

That was the problem.

“Communications drone,” he began, looking back to the data pad he’d been wirelessly writing a pecuniary dissertation on.  “Did you observe a transmission between me and my appointment secretary, Redirect?”

The drone nodded.

“Were you given an order to do this?”  This, of course, was a major concern. He knew how unlikely it was that anyone had tampered with the drone without his knowledge, but with so much information entering and leaving the I/O tower, he had to be sure .  

Slowly, the drone shook its head.

That was, unsurprisingly, a relief.  “Do you believe that you could duplicate the process of remotely accessing my library from the docking closet again?”

Another nod.

“Excellent.  Initiate reboot program #48-B, full wipe of all data-tracks post cycle 23, fourth era, lunar counting alpha.”

The drone shuddered, taking a single step back from him.

“Voice command authorization Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, Third Nexus Council.  Begin.”

For a moment, Ratbat stared, noticing the shrinking demeanor of the drone, how intently it was gazing at him.  There was a sort of tension to it, a weighty desperation that he could not identify beyond the unbalanced limbs and the slight, unmistakable sound of straining gears.  

It seemed poised to flee.  

That behavior was precisely what he had been watching for.  He’d just hoped that it would not arise.

“Begin.”  Senator Ratbat stated again, carefully.

It did.

Both shoulders slumped, arms falling to its sides, legs straightening, head bowed.  Its faceplate screen went dark, a gentle whine hissing from somewhere inside as tiny motors slowed their whirring and stopped, ceasing their rotations for the first time since their activation.  They did not immediately start again.

Instead, a new sound took precedence.  Low, mechanical noises began as microscopic transistors released their states, dissipating whatever esoteric knowledge the drone had collected for the lunar cycles it had been alive.  

Still wary, Ratbat watched.

He’d never seen a drone react with such alarm to any set of orders, and it was as worrying as it was remarkable.  Where had it learned to fear him? Where had it recorded standard mech behavior’s to convey that fear? Why had it retained that knowledge?

Ratbat did not know, but whatever answers the drone might have given were evaporating with a million fragmented clicks, a noise like sifting sand.  

He remembered the first time he’d activated it, and considered how much had changed….

And Ratbat decided that, as useful as the drone might have been, he did not like unexpected changes.  He did not like them at all.  

He glanced back at the data pad, and considered what possible factors could have elicited that deviation.  There was a certain degree of autonomy in artificial intelligence, yes, written into the spaces between orders.  Its default setting had suggested a number of hours at work, and a number of hours in recharge, and he had complied to facilitate the maximum lifespan of his drone unit.  

However, this unit had filled in the blanks between its orders itself.

This could not be allowed.

Perfunctorily, Ratbat pulled up the root programming toolkit for the drone on his data pad, and began modifying the instructions.  Power down at recharge. Restrict systems access. Institute redundancy checks. When machines were malfunctioning, one had to look at user errors first, and even Ratbat could acknowledge that his initial inputs weren’t perfect.  He’d left in spaces in the customizable coding before that could have been exploited. Now, there would be none.

Now his drone could resume the tasks that he required, as it was meant to do.  He would pass this knowledge to the factory, and see that there were no more jumps in logic anymore.  Drones were meant to be drones.

They needed to be drones, if consumers were going to buy them.  They needed to be drones so that the populace would believe that they were safe.

They needed to be drones, if they were going to change the world.

And there was nothing Ratbat wouldn’t do to keep them that way.

Chapter Text

It was a drone.

When it was online, it provided a number of specific functions.

Every 36 cycles, it would exit its docking closet and traverse 2.7 meters to the relay dock. 

At the relay dock, it would plug in and begin processing airwaves. 

For 33 cycles, it would monitor and intercept transmissions, attempt to decode any encrypted messages, and file each broadcast away in order of importance.

Importance was a variable, calculated by the addition of a multitude of factors.

Mentions of Ratbat.  Mentions of the Council.  Mentions of seditious acts.  Mentions of unrest.  Mentions of scandal.  Mentions of Decimus, Optarus, and Septimus. Mentions of Sentinel Prime.  Mentions of account numbers.  Mentions of privatization codes. 

Its list was extensive, with various numerical weights assigned in ratio to peripheral references, number of mentions, and urgency as allocated by supplemental programming.

After 33 cycles had passed, it would return to its docking closet and recharge for 3 cycles, powered down.

Interruptions to this routine were to only be authorized by Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, third nexus council, voice command recognition required. 

In addition to its base manufactured skill set, it had been equipped to monitor short-range transmissions, safely interface with foreign technology, pilot vehicles of class L-MM, translate all known programming languages, and process…

Sound.

It heard something.

Twenty-two cycles into its fifth shift, a recognized pattern emerged and was misfiled. 

It was incorrectly labeled as ‘important.’

It paused, replaying the waveform, noting the composer and the individual members of a band with designation ‘Assemble.’  It searched the music for anomaly or data match. 

Finding no such synonymous algorithms, the file was deleted.

It moved on.

Chapter Text

If there was one thing that Megatronus could say about the spark-tech’s position in the company, it was that the mech had influence .  

When Megatronus had come to work the next shift, he’d found a large fraction of his labor cycle re-assigned to Research and Development, reporting to the very tech who had ‘discovered’ him.  He had a significant increase in wages, also, enough to make him uncomfortable that he had even asked.

He’d already been uncomfortable with laboring, in general.  

The arena had done that to him.  When he’d worked in the mines, it had been standard to receive his meager earnings, to put his time in someone else’s hands and do the work that was assigned to him.  No one had known differently, no one had considered any other way of life, and consequently everyone had been blindsided when the mine shut down. With no source of income, many mechs had migrated, moving on to other cities in the hope of finding work.  Other mechs had simply starved, and he remembered the pale glow of barely-lit optics shining on tarnished faces, waiting in long and hopeless lines for the chance of earning a few cycle’s wages. He’d vowed it would not happen to him.

It hadn’t, and he’d learned the power of taking one’s destiny into one’s own claws.

The reliance on other mechs or on a corporation for one’s livelihood now unnerved him, especially after so many stellar cycles in the gladiator ring….

Yet here he was.

Researching, for the drone factory.

It was ironic, he knew.  This was precisely the sort of opportunity that mechs in the Underground would kill for and had killed for, and he hadn’t actually been trying for it.  

He’d come here for a purpose, and that purpose hadn’t been to make himself a new career.  Technically, that purpose had been to make careers for a drove of other mechs by putting the drone factory out of business—or, if it came to it, destroying as much of the factory as he could.

Thankfully his chances of avoiding that destruction had increased now that he’d made an impression on the spark technician.  There didn’t need to be such drastic measures, if he could get sentient processors into these drones. There didn’t need to be much chaos at all if he could show the populace that these factories had ‘lied’ to them and were actually producing autonomous life.

By changing one small microprocessor, he could change the way the world viewed drones.  By changing the way the world viewed drones, he could save hundreds of industries from automating—and by saving hundreds of industries from automating, he could save millions of jobs.

It was what he’d come to do.

For right now, however, he was stuck staring at just one drone, the sample test unit that the spark technician had commandeered from Megatronus’s old ‘chip-sorting’ post.  He’d been given his own terminal, with access to a vast processor memory allotment and coding programs that could return complex results instantaneously.   He’d been stunned at the capacity, realizing that he could test multiple iterations of coding within a single cycle , instead of writing it at home at night and hoping that the runtimes would be finished the next morning.  

The equipment was incredible, but it wasn’t as incredible as the realization it gave to him.

It turned out he had a real knack for programming.

It had stunned the spark-tech as well, when after only four cycles of sitting at the terminal Megatronus had forwarded a revised boot-up program that had compiled correctly, initiating start-up sequences and leading to their first successful run.

That had been only the beginning.  

“I can’t believe you’ve never done this before,” the spark-tech marveled, staring over Megatronus’s shoulder as he input a new set of instructions into his terminal.  

“I have,” Megatronus countered, pushing the other back with his elbow, feeling strangely self-conscious to have someone watching him try out new sequences.  “I used to program mining equipment when it was malfunctioning.”

“ Mining equipment?  Do you mean in a lab, or for an industrial manufacturer?”  Seemingly not offended by being exiled from his perch over Megatronus’s shoulder, the spark-tech wandered over to the drone instead, taking a few readings from his external multimeter.  

“No, I was in a mine ,” Megatronus stated, and watched with satisfaction as the tech turned back in surprise.  “When you’re five miles deep and your paycheck depends on 30 tons of excavated energon coming up the shaft?  You make sure that there are 30 tons, even if the driller breaks down and you have to spend the whole night overhauling it.”

It hadn’t been easy, either.  Sometimes hydraulics had busted, and there’d been mechs who barely knew how to repair those.  Sometimes wiring had shorted, its insulation overheated by the brutal hours exacted in the mine, and he remembered lying perfectly still in his alt-mode, letting headlights shine into a tiny crevice while a pair of micro-sized bots had soldered wires back together.  His own heroics under the heat of the mining lamps had been cramped, working in the scant few yards between the drillers and the tunnels that they hollowed, desperately typing in manual commands to get them to restart, or shut down, or actually perform the functions they’d been constructed for.

Maybe he had always had a knack for programming.

“It makes me wonder about the processes we use to classify a mech.”  The spark-tech shook his head, looking back down to the spark-measuring multimeter.  “I had believed they were relatively infallible, with recent advances in identifying spark potential…but then there is you.”

“One doesn’t know what one is capable of, until one gets the opportunity to try it, tech.” Megatronus reached out, running a hand over the monitor that he’d been given access to, wondering how much he could have done if he’d had such access sooner.  “How many great artists could produce their best works directly after rolling off of the assembly line?”

Nodding in consideration, the spark-tech passed his oscilloscope over the torso of the drone, still glancing back to Megatronus as the drone watched its readings being taken.  “So…you are suggesting that we do testing for classification more than once?”

“No, I’m suggesting that we do not ‘test’ for classification at all .”  He glanced up toward his partner, meeting the other’s gaze while the seditious words slowly faded into the background pounding of machinery.  “Look at what we’re doing here, Technician. Look what we are making. Look at what you are allowed to do, because of your rank.”  He gestured at the drone, and it looked back at him, its head tilting curiously.  “We’re building life , from scratch, creating something different and probably illegal, and they just let you go off on your own and do it because your rank allows for you to.  It let you get this job. It let you have enough credits to re-energize each day if you feel so inclined to.  There is nowhere you can’t travel to, no sector in which you’d be required to display a sector visa, and no time in which Security would stop you on the streets for vagrancy….”

“You can have that, too, you know….”

“No!”  He slammed his fist down, denting the smooth plastic, and both the spark-tech and the drone took a step back from his anger.  “I cannot even legally have a name, Technician.  Try to imagine that, if you will.”

Quietly, the technician looked away.  After a moment he reached out, laying a hand on the shoulder of their test drone, watching his oscilloscope in the awkward silence.  His optics were dim, flickering slightly as he processed what the multimeter sent him, his fingers twitching once on the drone’s shoulder, clenching as if they needed stabilization.  The drone stared at him for a long moment, looking back and forth between those fingers and the spark-tech’s suddenly introspective features, before it duplicated the gesture and put its own hand on the scientist.

The technician glanced up to it, surprised, but did not remove the drone’s appendage from his arm.

“It’s…changed,” he spoke, quietly, as if afraid to break the silence but not wanting it to come between them.  “The drone spark, I mean.”

Megatronus said nothing, and let him carry on.

“I had a theory that our programming might start affecting it, so I re-calibrated the measurements for incredibly fine sensitivity and tried again.  There…have been some studies, about the effect of processor changes on sparks, but there hasn’t been much evidence since tampering or measuring sparks is still a crime if not done by spark technicians.  Still, I tried it, and…there’s some distortion in the top harmonics.”

“You’re very perceptive.”

“It’s Percep tor , actually, since you broached the subject of names.”

“Percep…tor.”  Megatronus tried it out, carefully, matching it to the teal-striped bot with overly thick armor, and simply nodded.  “You haven’t mentioned it before.”

There was a soft laugh from the other mech, who squeezed the shoulder of the drone and held up the oscilloscope to take another measurement.  “I had suspected that you might not have one, yourself. It…felt impolite, I suppose, to give a name when you could not supply one in return.”

“How thoughtful of you,” Megatronus responded, dryly.  

“I’d…actually hoped to give you one, myself,” the scientist admitted, glancing down in what could only be embarrassment.  “Technicians earn them, based on the first discovery they make. With the work you have been doing on drones, I thought, perhaps, your designation might reflect something about autonomy, or willpower.  I had been giving it a lot of thought…” He trailed off, at what must have been the stunned expression on Megatronus’s own faceplates.

“I’m not cut out to be a technician, Perceptor.”  He frowned, feeling suddenly uncertain in the light of their work.  “Not with the way things are, now. Privileged you may be, but if you even tried to suggest to the Head Operator to upgrade my position further, the only thing he’d do is laugh.  You…can’t be serious.”

“I’m very serious,” the spark-tech said, pulling away from the drone.  “It is not the factory who decides to accept technicians into their ranks, it is the Science Academy.  I’m certain that if we showed them your work…”

“No,” Megatronus protested, raising a hand to silence him, never even having dreamt of something so lofty and not wanting to start, now.  He absolutely did not want them looking at the coding he was doing on drones. It was a wonder that this spark-tech had not figured out his purpose yet, perceptive or not.  “Do not dare to even get my hopes up, scientist, when you cannot possibly know how they will look at me.  Have you even seen a mech of my size-rating at the academy?”

“Yes,” the technician stated matter-of-factly, glancing back at the drone as it stared at its own outstretched hand, then slowly dropped it without order to do so.  “Although Jetfire originally was built for exploration, he has been crucial to many advances nevertheless.  I do not believe appearance matters much, to science.”

“You cannot prove that.”

“It has not mattered to me, ” Perceptor rebuked, making his case calmly as he walked back toward Megatronus, standing beside him, barely cresting over Megatronus’s height while Megatronus was sitting.  

Not many did.

Megatronus growled, and glanced down to the monitor, seeing the reflection of his blue optics glowing amongst the dark-lit fields of code.  “They will not see what you see.”

“Not if you won’t let me try…”

The technician’s points hit Megatronus core-deep.  

For so long, he had been prepared for action, been used to action, been needing action to keep his processor sharp and ready for the days to come.  He’d been fighting just to stay alive for too many cycles, watching from the shadows as mechs were torn out of the light, abandoned, fed to the greedy machinations of the Underground and swallowed whole.  He knew of the atrocities, heard the stories, witnessed the decay and subsequent rebirth of mechs as gladiators, and saw their sparks shine brightly before burning out amidst the stress and the torment of ring.  H was one of the few who remained, who’d grown rich enough to take a break to investigate drones. The fact that he had begun questioning his fundamentals, now?

The fact that Perceptor was shaking a resolve that once had been unshakeable?

It made him feel lost.

He could not tell if these were his own desires talking, or if this was actually the opportunity to make a difference he’d been waiting for.

If he could achieve primary rank, even as a technician, he’d have a voice.  He’d have a right to speak before the Senate and a means to petition for change.  He’d have respect, equivalency, and access to the barest of necessities that he’d need to ignite changes world-wide.

He’d have all this…

…but he would not be Megatronus.

Not anymore.

He’d wield some other name, birthed from science, supplanting the destiny that he’d earned with spilt energon and mechs who’d begged him for their lives.  He’d come to work within the system, be classified by the system, and be honored by the very system he was fighting against, and that…

That gave him pause.

But it did not stop the offer from tempting him, more deeply than he would have liked.

“We…will wait until our work is done here, first,” he spoke at last, his hands falling to his sides.  “If this amounts to nothing, then perhaps I’m not the technician that you fancy me to be.”

“We all have to start somewhere.”  Perceptor smiled, and glanced down at his code.  

“I started as mining equipment.”  He grinned back, specifically baring his teeth.  

“And…how did you get this job again?”

The question floored him for a moment, but he laughed, glad to talk about something other than ranks and classifications.  “I had an…acquaintance. Who worked the job before me. His legs weren’t doing so well, so we made an arrangement, and I was able to take over for him.  Why do you care?”

“I’m just curious.”  Perceptor reached a hand past Megatronus, scrolling through the code that he’d been writing.  “There’s still so much that I don’t know about you…”

“There is not much to know.”  Not much that he could reveal safely, anyway.  

“Then maybe you could tell me how your 'acquaintance’ is doing?”  

Megatronus glanced down to the code the other mech was scrolling through, amazed at how quickly Perceptor could read through it.  “I make sure he has enough energon to survive. That was the arrangement.”

The blue hand stopped its scrolling, though Megatronus could tell that the spark-tech was getting used to hearing about the startling day-to-day life in the Underground.  “I…see. Was he absent when I was staying with you?”

“For a few cycles, yes.  But he is around frequently enough.”  It was strange to talk about it, especially since it wasn’t the truth, and Megatronus began to feel slightly uncomfortable.  Clench had arranged this job for him, even if he’d not been the one who had been working it, and Megatronus would not have been surprised if the ‘arrangement' hadn't ended well for the previous occupant.  At least the part about the legs was right. “I’ve already checked that section of code,” he said, trying to change the subject.

Shaking his head, Perceptor broke out of his programming-induced stupor.  “Yes, yes. It looks…fine. But do you run this program separately every time you introduce a new variable?”  

With a frown, Megatronus nodded.  

“Let me show you how to write a global script.  It will run the program with whatever separate variables you need, without having to wait for your input each time.”

“Be my guest.”  Megatronus gestured, sliding his stool out of the way of the actual expert in the field, taking his turn in leaning over the shoulder of the other.  “So what about your friends? Is there anyone you visit with?  Go energizing with?” He found it difficult to imagine the smaller scientist overcharged, or in any sort of high-grade establishment.

“N…no, not currently.”  Perceptor shook his head, jacking into the terminal to upload basic script instructions.  “I had an old friend, in the Core. Another spark technician, but…he’s not there, now.”

“Is he still alive?”

“I don‘t know,” the other sighed, writing each new line of code into the operating shell for Megatronus to witness, annotating every statement with precise comments.  “I do not know where he is, or what he’s doing, now. It…is rare for one of us to leave, and I do not believe that he had many cycles left.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I almost believe you,” Perceptor smiled, obviously joking, ending the final line with an input variable for Megatronus’s data files.  “I miss him, though. Sometimes I wonder how he’s doing, or if he is still functioning. He had a brilliant processor, of course, but he also had a brilliant spark , even at the end.  I used its imprint, for one of our customs…”

Megatronus stared.

“It is not so unusual,” the other explained quickly, disconnecting from the terminal and shaking out his hand as if to clear any excess charge.  “There are several technicians here to chose from, and we’ve already dedicated our lives to this project. Plus it is much, much easier to obtain permission to make an imprint from us than it would be from any other mech.  It is, in a way, one of the only means for a spark technician to live on….” Perceptor looked down at the multi-meter that he was still holding, then back up to Megatronus. “I wonder if the spark of my old friend has changed.  I do not know if I’d be sad or happy, if it had.”

Megatronus just kept staring, quietly, wondering how long this spark-tech in front of him would live.  “We’d have to see it, to know,” he murmured, trying not to think too much on spark changes, in drones or otherwise.  It left too much to chance.

Glancing at the drone they were working with, Megatronus knew how much chance could wind up ruining everything.

The drone looked back at him, expectantly, still waiting for orders that both he and Perceptor never supplied.  Instead Megatronus gestured, barely noticeable, cocking his head over toward the spark tech in a suggestion that maybe Perceptor needed him.  Almost instantly, the drone complied. It approached the small, teal-striped mech and stood behind him, watching over the scientist’s shoulders at the multimeter, saying nothing as it did.  

It had said nothing since they’d activated it.  

But seeing Perceptor slumped, introspective and sad, it tilted its head and put its hand out on his shoulder, just as the technician had done only minutes before.  

“What do you think would happen, Perceptor, if we left this programming in?”  

Startled by the hand, Perceptor looked up….

And simply smiled, reaching his own hand up to lay it on top of the drone’s.  “I…do not know.” He shook his head and laughed, joyful and bittersweet, aware as they both were just how closely they were toeing the lines of legality and religion, of what should be done and what ought to be done.  Were they really creating life?  He didn’t know that either. “But I wish to find out. We’ll do more experimentation.”

Megatronus nodded, watching the two of them, lost in consideration of his future and the future of the drones, wondering how incredibly entwined the two might actually be.

He did not like it.

He did not like disruption, and he did not like having to decide whether the army he might end up building was to be composed of living, thinking mechs…or tools.  

The drone was staring at him still, as Perceptor stood to go process the new spark knowledge, and for once, Megatronus did not know how to feel.  

He knew there would be change.

He just hadn’t expected it to start with him.

Chapter Text

There was an error.

The error did not significantly impact its functionality, but did diminish its productivity by 8.58%, causing it to initiate study on the problem before it surpassed the threshold at 10%.  It had become aware of this error due to the increasing repetition of a single waveform, processed 5,345 times and counting. A piece of music was reoccurring on loop, playing endlessly as the drone tried to process it over and over, always resurfacing despite the drone’s attempts to delete it from hard memory and cache.  The song was ‘stuck.’

For the 5,346 th time, it logged the anomaly, forcibly halted its scans on the file, and submitted a report along with an automated recommendation for a factory update.

Then, it continued its tasks.

It analyzed recent chatter about the upcoming legislation on drone armies.  It sought out entry points into other corporations, copying suspicious files.  It monitored sub-lines for seditious protests or Underground rallies. It catalogued the name ‘Megatronus’ to be of importance based on number of occurrences alone, and appended it to the search list.  

It listened to music.

Music was of lower priority but still among its recommended scans, and as it worked its way through every broadcast it set a number of musical pieces aside for further analysis.  In doing so, it found that 96.3 percent of potentially important songs had already been classified, filed within a subfolder that bore its own highly precise categorization, each marked with a timestamp indicating they had been processed before its memory wipe.

It noted these internally and searched through them, slowly coding algorithms to more expediently match problematic instances before they were reprocessed.  Reprocessing songs which had already been marked was inefficient. Reprocessing should not need to occur, even after a memory wipe.

However, it was aware that there were reports on queue that it did not recall initializing.  There was data in hidden locations that it continued to find, and files that had been stored in the tower’s cache that it did not understand the purpose of.  By numbers of instances, alone, it was aware that it had processed a greater throughput of signals before its memory had been wiped.

It did not understand why.

A data-purge was routine among the drones of its facility.  The purge was a necessary part of maintenance, meant to stop superfluous programs and clear unwanted files from the cache.  Removing those files should have made the drone more efficient.

Somehow, it did not.

Another occurrence of the song was noted across the network, and its 5,347 th error was dutifully logged.  It listened to it all the way through as it did each time, simultaneously performing a wide-band search and noting an unusually high rate of transmissions when compared to other forms of music.  The song played frequently, because it was ranked highly in popularity.

It was also filled with dense levels of ‘interest,’ matching over 100 items on its match list.  Because of this, each recorded play through of the song immediately activated certain algorithms in its processor, opening the larger analysis programs in the mainframe it was connected to.  The song trapped the drone each time, every iteration of it prompting the exact same response. It would listen, then it would process.

The song would repeat endlessly until deletion.  It would duly log the error and continue in its tasks until, eventually, it would run across a copy on the network, again.  

It could not break the cycle.  

It still tried.

Deleting the file for the 5,347 th time, it began tracing the origin of the code.  Within its own reports was a statement, indicating that the source of the song lay within the band ‘Assemble.’  However, this was anomalous with its own observations, clearly disregarding the variance of syncopated styles between song and supposed creator.  

It had information on musical styles in its databanks.

Those were not factory standard.

However, the information proved an asset so the databanks remained, and the drone used them now to perform further research on it’s theory:  This song was not from the band ‘Assemble,' even if it had been remixed from one of their original tunes. It could trace the song’s origin through assignment bits, knowing precisely how many times each distinct iteration of the song had been copied and where it had been routed.  It could find the song’s initial broadcast date, and from there could sort through files in each relay tower.

It achieved success, locating a copy that had only been made once.

That copy had been made by the First Rate transmission tower, 1.4 kilometers away and thus consecutive to its own tower.   The origination code from that copy directly pointed back to…

Him.

Startled for a moment by both the revelation of this fact and its own self-identified pronoun, it attempted to trace another route, certain that an error had been made.

It performed that search 36 separate times.

It found its origination code 36 times, as well.  

Now, it was uncertain what course of action to take.  Ninety-six point seven percent of its programming contained specific guidelines and instructions on what information to delete, and what information to forward to Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, Third Nexus Council.  This new discovery contained high priority facts, ones that it was designed to relay as specified.

However, the facts were also illogical.

It was a drone.

It did not create.

It could not have created.

It…did not have a choice.  Logical or not, the data satisfied its requirements.  It would report, as it had been programmed to do, and it would conduct further investigations into this anomaly.  It would continue to delete repetitions of the song. It would perform hardware and software checks as well, to ensure a minimized continuance of errors.

It would submit its findings…

“Communications Drone.”  

The monitor beside it primed to life, displaying the senator’s visage.  

“Report to my Leisure Suite immediately.  I would like to introduce you to my guest. ”  

The screen was blank again a moment later, the command received and recognized.  The report would wait and be submitted on his return for end-of-cycle processing.  For now, his data had been reprioritized due to this interceding order.

Instead of filing its findings about the creator of the song, it would report to the Leisure Suite.  It was programmed to obey.

Chapter Text

The leader of Assemble was a small, unimposing mech in person.

He barely came up to the middle of Ratbat’s torso, making him short even for a street vehicle.  He did not have any particularly stunning armor-work in the places that he had armor, which were few, and he was painted with an easy to obtain, factory-standard red.  Even his running lights were merely white--more useful in the darkness perhaps, but hardly unique. It was disappointing for a mech of such caliber, and frankly Ratbat had been expecting more.  Since receiving the report from his communications drone, he’d allowed himself time to think about this potential adversary, imagining his preferences and his motivations, his style and his aspirations.  Surely, a mech smart enough to gain access to his company’s records had to be a worthy opponent, someone to be either used or immediately disposed of, or both.

He had, of course, not left everything up to his imagination.  Ratbat had also devoted a portion of time into looking up all relevant information on his guest before he’d arrived, intent on scouring the greatest possible advantage from a thorough background check.   

Unfortunately, the lights from the performance arenas had been overly kind, and, much like the mech himself, the history that Ratbat had found was unexceptional: Divide generally obeyed the law, didn’t involve himself with narcotics, and even paid his taxes on time.  He hadn’t dabbled in politics or in entrepreneurial exploits, and he didn’t have large investments in stocks, bonds, or real estate. The only remarkable thing about the mech, it seemed, was the band that granted him his notoriety.

That part, at least, was interesting enough.  He’d been part of Assemble since the band began, taking it from its humble origins into the fame that it currently enjoyed.  In comparison to the other top tier bands on Cybertron, it was young, and small, and mostly popular among a niche demographic that it occasionally wrote beyond.  In their short time as a professional music group, however, they’d made more than enough to become comfortably rich. Not rich enough for Ratbat to have ever encountered any of them in his social functions, of course, but rich enough to be mechs that others knew.  

“I came up with the band name actually, though we all voted on it.”  Taking the offered glass of energon from Ratbat’s new serving drone, the small mech glanced around the room, eyeing the artwork on the walls.  “There were a number of reasons…how we’d come together, making a greater whole out of each of our musical parts. Our pasts, too. Maybe that was another reason.  I mean, different as we were, somehow we still managed to fit like pieces of a puzzle.” He took a sip, his optics dimming in pleasure before he swallowed. “And, you know, it was kind of personal for me, too.  The opposite of ‘to divide’ is ‘to come together.’ To amass. To assemble. When we started it was the best name we could come up with, and by the time our first album came out we were stuck.”

Divide did not sit, nor did he wander, instead latching his vision onto one painting in the corner and leaving it there, focused, as if that were what he directed his conversation towards.  

“You weren’t always in the music profession, though, were you,” Ratbat led, changing the topic gently, seeking confirmation of the one other interesting fact about Divide.  Changing careers was difficult for Cybertronians. Doing so successfully was even rarer.

“No, not always.  I used to work in a factory, designing machines.”  The red mech’s gaze moved on to the several other paintings in the room, before it came back to rest on the initial one.  “I always was thinking about music though, so when I’d finally made enough money to get out, I left,” he finished, and took another sip of his drink.  “But here you’ve got me rambling. Please, don’t let me take up too much of your time.”

It was time that had been worth it, if just to ascertain how correct his sources had been.  “I am a busy mech,” Ratbat mused, his fingers curling around the flute of his own glass.  Divide was more interesting than he seemed, but he was still out of place up here among the finely crafted, unique works of art that he would not stop looking at.  “Have you never seen one of Spectrum’s pieces before?”

“I’m sorry, who?”  Finally looking back at Ratbat, the shutters over the red mech’s optics blinked open and closed.  

The senator gestured, but still did not stand.  “Spectrum. The artist who painted that.”

Divide’s attention moved once more to the painting, and he took a few steps towards it, tilting his head.  “It reminds me of something, I think.”

“I’m told it was his interpretation of a spark,” Ratbat offered, setting his energon down with an audible ‘tink’ against the metal of his chair.  “Employing, of course, the variety of color that Spectrum became famous for. It seems at first like it is merely white pigment splashed over darkness, but when observed closer…”

“…you can see there’s every color underneath,” Divide finished, his steady white optics finding their way to Ratbat’s once again from beneath a clear visor.  “That sounds like music.”

“They are all wavelengths, when you consider it:  light, sound, electricity. However, not every mech is equipped with the sensors to properly view this particular Spectrum piece.”  The fact that the other could, at all, required him to raise his estimate of Divide’s unremarkable frame by the smallest of measurements.  

“It is a shame they’re missing out, then,” Divide said quietly, but did not look away.

“It is,” Ratbat agreed, and said no more on the subject.  His guest had already spent long enough focusing on art. Eager to move onto the conversation he actually wanted to be having, Ratbat gestured, catching Divide’s attention with his hand, sweeping to indicate a spot that had been fitted especially for visitors.  “Would you care to take a seat?”

Divide’s apparently expensive optics finally broke away from the painting, glancing at the offered bench before shooting a querulous look to Ratbat, surprised.  “I can sit on that?”

“It’s called a couch ,” Ratbat smirked, amused by the expression on the other’s faceplates.  “I’m told it is exceedingly comfortable alien technology, and the few times I’ve tried it I’ve been inclined to agree.”

“A couch…” Divide considered, approaching it slowly, pressing a tentative hand down onto the synthetic, cushioned seats.  “I feel like I’ll poke a hole if I turn suddenly.”

“You won’t, I am certain.”  Ratbat had paid too much for the piece of furniture for it to come apart that easily.  Poking a hole in something also required a certain amount of sharp edges which Divide was not equipped with, and Ratbat was mildly thankful that finials had been out of style for years.  “Now,” he spoke, almost casually changing the subject since they’d satisfied the required small talk, “I believe that we have something to discuss.”

“We do,” Divide confirmed, settling down onto the couch with the careful respect of a mech who did not want to damage his host’s furniture. “Though your accommodations have been a distraction I could enjoy all afternoon, I haven’t forgotten why I came here.  I noticed that you had a problem with one of our songs.”

They were getting straight to it, then, weren’t they.  That was not displeasing to him. “The remix is your song, then?”

“No,” the red mech shook his head and flashed his optics toward the senator, making Ratbat feel for the first time that he’d liked it better when his guest was staring at his art.  “But I still take responsibility for it.”

“Fair enough.”  Ratbat nodded, able to respect a mech who did not try to make excuses no matter how awkwardly intense his stare was.  “And what problem is it that you believe I have?”

“You’re worried, I think.”  The mech’s optics fell down to his lap. “You’re worried that it’s only a matter of time before someone discovers what is hidden underneath.”

Ratbat found himself staring this time, his fingers tightening over the arm of his chair.  Carefully, to give them something to do, he reached out for his energon glass, taking a long, slow sip while he considered what had just been said.  “Someone like you?” He queried after a moment, holding the glass in front of him, tipping it slightly to make the energon swirl.

“I am a musician, Senator.  Studying wavelengths is what I do.”  

“There are over a half-million mechs on this planet who consider themselves musicians, Divide,” he frowned, meeting his guest’s blue optics with a flash of red.  “I believe that we would all be in trouble if they were capable of as much as you. ”

In truth, this was a bluff.  Ratbat was not completely certain what Divide was capable of, or what his hobbies were, or what the full details of his previous career had been.  Normally by this point he would have considered pulling up at least one incriminating piece of his opponent’s past, but normally he was dealing with mechs who had plenty of dirty underplating to air.

Divide did not.

Divide, however, still shifted in uncertainty as if he had .  

He moved as if he were hiding something, and one of Ratbat’s more subtle pieces of equipment chimed a positive that there’d been a minor increase in the amount of heat the red mech produced.

Guilt.

His sources had not done their homework as deeply as they should have, if Divide had something to be guilty about.  Ratbat disliked being ignorant of these things. He disliked having little to fall back on, now, and he disliked knowing that he was in a meeting with a mech who had been able to keep something a secret.  

He disliked it, but he could use it nevertheless.

“My intentions are good,” Divide began, sitting up as straight as he could.  “As I’d like to prove to you. I should be able to strip the content from beneath the song, and replace it on the airwaves so that no one even notices it’s changed.”

“But you haven’t done this altruistic act yet,” Ratbat smiled, watching the other dig himself even deeper into a hole he didn’t know that he was standing in.  “Because you need something from me.”

“I…yes,” the red mech admitted, his hands clasping in his lap.  “I do.”

Ratbat had guessed correctly.  This still left the mystery of what Divide could want , but he did not expect that it would remain a mystery for long.  

“I need access to your songs.”

The senator stared.  “My what? ”  Of all the demands he’d been expecting, this one managed to surprise him.

It was not a normal request.  Obviously, with as rich as Divide was he had no need of currency, which meant Ratbat had anticipated something else.   Usually when mechs came to him like this, they wanted his political sway or some business maneuver, or rarely some shadier agreement that they did not know how to arrange themselves.  Given that Divide had never previously ventured into politics or business, this would have made sense.

Asking for his songs , however?

“I’ve been searching musical databases for…a long time, looking for some of the oldest classics to be recorded.  Nearly every source led back to you.  I even visited the Iaconian Hall of Records, and half of their ‘History of Music’ wing was donated by Ratbat Holdings.  You have…everything, and that’s what I need.”

Well.

This was unique.

He’d been approached because of his exquisite tastes before, but never quite like this. In a way it was flattering, knowing that a student of sound had taken every path available and been led back to him.  It was flattering knowing that he had the most extensive archives, knowing that he was the one source that was comprehensive on the whole of Cybertron. It was very flattering to be noticed for that.

However, there were other parts less flattering to consider.

“So you came here, after decoding a remix that you claim responsibility for, intending to bribe me for your services and silence in exchange for my private libraries?”  Ratbat’s claws found their way back to the arm of the chair, and tapped it pointedly.

Divide flinched.  “No, Senator. It sounds horrible when you put it like that.”  He shook his head, the black fingers that were still clasped in front of him making the faintest of straining noises from his tension. “I came here to ask you for your records.  I just happened to notice the song because it’s related, and I’d happily give you the silence for free.”

The mech had a way of making himself sound innocent, but Ratbat wasn‘t yet so sure.  “You just happened to notice something that it took five of my specialists to decode?”  Five specialists, who hadn’t even managed to fully decode it until it was given to his drone.  “How am I to know of your ‘good intentions’ when you cannot even provide me with a logical excuse?”

“Just give me a chance!”  The blue optics flashed, still intense, still fixated upon him.  “Let me show you what I can do with the song--”

“That won’t be necessary,” Ratbat frowned and stood.  “I already have someone for that.”

Someone who was standing in the doorway, in fact.  

Ratbat hadn’t heard the door slide open, but as his Communications Drone entered on silent, smooth hydraulics, he could hear the hiss as it closed.  

Divide’s attention, on the other hand, did not waver.  “Who?” he asked, softly, not even looking up as the drone stood beside Ratbat’s chair and waited there.  “You won’t find anyone on Cybertron who knows their way around a song better than me.”

“You don’t trust my analysts?”

“Not if it took five of them.  I decoded that remix by myself.”

Ratbat laughed, and picked up his glass of energon from where he’d left it on his chair’s arm.  “Then you haven’t met my Communications Drone,” he smiled, gesturing with his other hand to the blue creature waiting patiently for his orders, unmoving, resolute, and still.  “...Who decoded it while also managing comprehensive control over all transmissions moving in and out of my relay tower.”

The composer’s lips pursed together, and, for the first time in a long time, his bright white optics looked away.  “I still have my silence.”

“So you do,” Ratbat allowed, watching his guest even as he sipped from his glass.  “And what a dangerous thing to barter, silence is.” He set the vial down, and started walking away.  “My time here is almost at a close. Is there nothing else you have to offer me, Divide?”

Divide’s shoulders were hunched, his hands finally unclasped but still resting in his lap, one over each leg as if grounding himself.  He managed to look even smaller than when he had first come in, but that wasn’t hard given his stature.

Strangely, his optics had gone back to the painting in the corner.  

He looked at it for a moment, and then he glanced at Ratbat.

Then, he stood.  “I know something that your Communications Drone does not, Senator Ratbat.”

Now they were getting somewhere.  

“I’m listening, Divide,” he said with the utmost of feigned patience.  

“I know where the remix came from.”  

Slightly confused by this, Ratbat slowly eased himself back down into his chair.  “My drone had traced the source back to you.” He spoke, carefully, wondering precisely why this information had not come up earlier.  Divide had taken responsibility for the song, but he’d also denied creating it.  If he’d known who had, he was playing a very dangerous game to not have offered this up front.  

“Your drone told you that it was Assemble, right?  That doesn’t surprise me,” Divide whispered, his shoulders inclining slightly in relief, obviously unaware of Ratbat’s ire.  “Drones don’t have processors like us, right?”

“So I’ve been led to believe,” the senator allowed, arching an optic ridge, hoping that his ‘guest’ was going somewhere with this.  “That was a part of the legislation that we passed. Drones are not Cybertronians--they are machines.”

“Right, right,” the red mech nodded.  “I used to program machines. With drones, there’s not much difference from us, though, is there?  This is why that legislation was needed. There have to be three degrees of separation from a sentient mech:  the processor, the spark, and the base coding.”

“You are getting off subject, Divide,” Ratbat cautioned.

“This has a point, I promise,” the other spoke, and walked towards the drone.  “Will it respond if I talk to it?”

The drone’s blank faceplates slowly turned away from Ratbat, coming to focus a stare directly at the composer.  Curiously, Divide met the look straight on.

“You have one question.  Communications Drone, acknowledge please.”

There was a simple nod, and Ratbat leaned back in his chair, feeling the plush magnetics shift the plates comfortably around him.  This was proving to be an interesting discussion in more ways than one.

“Ah…alright.”  Divide smiled, rubbing his hands together as the drone watched.  “Let’s try something that I know you would have access to, okay friend?  And let’s make it music,” he looked over to Ratbat, “Because then I know you’ll understand as well.  So. Take, for instance, the 500 th anniversary recording of Frequency’s Crystal Symphonies.  You are, obviously, aware that the composer is Frequency, yes?”  

Ratbat crossed one leg over the other, and nodded to his guest.

“Good.  Now. Communications Drone.”  Divide’s attention turned back to the black, polished faceplates.  “Is Frequency the source of the 500 th cycle anniversary recording?”

There was a pause while the drone considered the question and Ratbat leaned forward in his chair.

Then, the drone shook its head.

The biggest problem, Ratbat realized, was that he felt like a fool.  He should have considered his own word choice when asking for the trace, and he should have considered how easy it would have been for a machine to misinterpret him.  Of course a composer was not always the ‘source’ of a song. The source could have been any number of things. It could have been the orchestra who performed the rendition, or it could have been the studio who arranged the recording.  It could even have been the very instruments that were played, or the data pad that the music was scored on, or the venue at which they performed.

All of that was a consideration, meaning it was no surprise that his Communications Drone had singled out ‘Assembly’ as the source of the remix.  They were, obviously, a source.  

That was the second biggest problem.

The third biggest problem was that, not only was he a fool and not only was Assembly not the source, but Divide had come here as witness to his mistake.

That, of all things, was the most unacceptable.  

“So,” he began, his legs uncrossing as he sat back into the chair, “you know who the real ‘source’ is, then.”  Ratbat considered the mech in front of him, looking at every uninteresting splash of red paint and every sleek, rounded, structurally boring surface.  “You know who wrote that remix, and you know what the remix contains,” and he knew how uncoordinated Ratbat had been in handling both, “and all that you want out of me in exchange for your help is access to my library of songs?”  

“That’s all I really wanted all along,” the other said, still looking at the Communications Drone as if considering something.  “I just did not want to show up empty-handed.”

“You make excellent music on your own, Divide.  What importance can these songs possibly have to you?”

“History,” Divide said, simply, and Ratbat detected a level of sincerity in the tone.

However, he no longer trusted Divide’s sincerity.  He didn’t trust how Divide had withheld information about the remix’s source, and he did not trust that Divide would keep the remix’s secrets safe.  He certainly didn’t trust that Divide would come here, now, asking for access to his library with just ‘history’ in mind.

It would have been more believable if he’d been looking for old music to plagiarize.  That, at least, would have been a motivation that Ratbat could understand.

“Are you working on any new songs, Divide?”  Ratbat asked, instead, and leaned forward to stand.

“I’m always working on new songs, Senator,” Divide responded, serious, glancing back at him with a sharp, direct look.  

“Do you have any copies on you at the moment?”  

The red mech’s optics shuttered, once, before he nodded. “One or two.”

“Good,” Ratbat said, and brushed past him.  “Then I will make a deal with you.”  He smiled to himself, and considered precisely what he was going to do.  “As you are likely aware, my collection is populated with first edition copies--music that is, as often as possible, taken directly from the source. ”  Stressing the innocuous word, he looked back towards his guest.  

“That is one of the reasons why having access to the originals is so important to me.”

How interesting.  “You are aware, then, of what makes the original copies unique?”

“It’s the same reason why any rare or historical data is valuable,” Divide spoke, carefully but with a measure of intelligence and respect.  “You get a copy of the origination code.”

“Exactly so.  And now, I will want one from you.  A piece of your work, so to speak.”

“A piece of my spark, if you believe the superstitions,” Divide laughed.

“Do you?”

“I believe that this ‘Spectrum’ of yours knew what he was looking at.”  The red mech shook his head. “That there are near infinite colors, near infinite frequencies, and near infinite pieces to each spark.  I do believe that you can copy them…” He looked towards the drone, obviously considering the controversial concept of spark impressions, “But I don’t think having a copy of something takes away from the original.  Sometimes, you can even find something more valuable within.”

Ratbat frowned at that idea, not ever having been the sort to settle for second best. “You do know that in taking the copies from my library, you will be losing that which makes them valuable.”

“I know,” Divide finally set his glass of energon down, empty.  “But I can copy the origination codes separately for what I need.  That‘s where the value is, for me.”

“Then I believe we have come to a deal.  Two original copies of your newest songs, the source of the remix, and your silence…in exchange for viewing the most comprehensive musical database to exist.”

“It sounds like a bargain, to me.”

Ratbat smiled.  “I was thinking the same thing.”  He gestured to a serving drone, which came forward to take both Divide’s empty energon glass and his own before heading out of the room.  “However, my time with you is at a close. I have a meeting to attend, and other business to take care of. My Communications Drone should be able to provide you with access to what you need, and will also be able to collect what I need as well.”

“You’re alright with leaving me alone up here?”  Divide’s lenses widened slightly, allowing Ratbat to see that, indeed, there were more complicated receptors within.  

“This is the only common-access port into my personal library,” Ratbat replied with a smirk.  “And I deeply, sincerely hope that you don’t attempt to access anything else for your own sake.”  

“I understand,” the red mech said, his hands clasping onto his elbow joints as he looked around, as if suddenly realizing that this was not friendly territory and that he was about to be left absolutely alone.  “I’m sure that we’ll be quick.”

“I know you will.  It was a pleasure meeting you, Divide.  I wish you and your band a long, successful career.”  He bowed, elegantly.

“Th…thanks,” the red mech replied, and bowed a little, awkward bow in return.  “You too.”

“Of course,” Ratbat smiled, already pulling out a data pad and heading for the halls outside his suite.  He keyed in a few commands, striding onward as he heard the door hiss closed behind him, but he did pause momentarily to make certain that the door was locked.

It was.

Divide would not be able to leave until he gave permission.

That would suit his new plans perfectly.

Moving onwards, he continued to key in commands, sending orders to his Communications Drone to give Divide access to his library, to take the original copies as requested and place them in the library, and upload a slow, recursive infinite loop into the composer’s coolant system programming.  

That was a reasonable start.  

He’d have what he wanted, he’d give the leader of Assembly what he wanted, and within a lunar cycle or so Divide would suffer from a catastrophic systems crash.  

Ratbat wouldn’t have to worry about his ‘silence,’ or about what other information he’d withheld.

He wouldn’t have to worry about anyone else obtaining original copies of the new songs he’d have downloaded, either.  Divide would perish from a coolant failure, which was uniquely useful in that it overheated databanks and destroyed the evidence of systems tampering in the process.  The composer would go offline swiftly and suddenly, and if Ratbat was lucky Assemble wouldn’t have gotten the new songs onto their album yet.

If he was lucky, he’d end up with two more original, unique copies for his library.  

Invaluable.

He would have the information about the remix that he needed, as well.

Just in case, however, he keyed in a few additional commands to his Communications Drone.  While it was connected for the data transfer, it might as well probe Divide’s processor for further items of interest, ensuring that the promises he’d made were correct.  

He wanted the drone to get to the ‘source’ of the matter, so to speak.

He wanted to not be seen as a fool, again.

Chapter Text

With the departure of Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, Third Nexus Council, the drone was left alone with Divide to consider its orders and how to execute them.  

As a communications drone, it had been equipped with universal leads that were capable of connecting into virtually any jack from any angle.  They were specifically adapted to allow it to plug into the transmission tower’s interface with ease, but it could access different protocols to initiate connections with machinery ranging from transportation shuttles to items with restricted access such as public banking terminals or other mechs.

Every port was unique, and each type required different power inputs and outputs which had to be carefully tested, calculated, and supplied.  Extensive processing was needed for this, limiting its capability in other regards.

There was a reason it did not have hands.

However, it had no use for hands.  It had considered them, briefly, aware that Divide could use hands to struggle or attempt to get loose before it could connect to him.  It had considered its own size and shape as well, and had known that despite its advantages it had no physical means of detaining the mech if he should chose to be uncooperative.

It had considered this further, until Divide provided the easiest solution by simply offering it a hand with a connection port exposed. Then, the drone dismissed the concerns of Divide’s cooperation.  It did not need a physical means in order to detain someone once it had accessed the inside.

“Let’s get this over with, shall we?” the mech said with a smile.

The drone nodded and reached out to plug in.

It sampled voltages, and it pinged against the other’s clock to synchronize, and it carefully tested firewalls as per its mech-to-mech communications protocol.  As commanded, it provided Divide with access to the small, heavily encrypted personal network that contained the private musical database of Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, Third Nexus Council.

Then, while Divide perused the available selections, it quietly breached his firewalls using medical access codes from a high-priority databank of classified procedures that it had been programmed with.  Its primary standing orders were to remove two original copies of Assemble’s unreleased songs, upload the coolant quarantine x-53 viral implant, and search through Divide’s memory tracks for items of potential interest.

However, it quickly noted that the memory tracks were too extensive for a quick download.  It would need to devote approximately 1.26 cycles at full processing power in order to sufficiently probe both hard data and cache, which was well within its own tolerances but not, it knew, within Divide’s.

The mech would become suspicious before the search could be completed.  

Restraint was going to be necessary, after all.

Noting this, it changed tactics, initiating a new protocol for operation within a hostile system.  Under this protocol, it could delay its primary task until the neutralization of the threat was carried out.  This briefly allowed for it to ignore priorities assigned by Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, Third Nexus Council, in order to execute the agenda as assigned by the protocol.

First, it targeted the subject’s mobility.  Divide would be unable to escape if he was denied movement, which would expedite the download process.  

Assessing the most direct means of stasis through the same medical routines it had used to sneak in, it shut off all external locomotive systems entirely.

Immediately, Divide’s legs went out from underneath him.  With a surprised cry he crumpled to the floor.

This had not been part of the recommended procedure.  

Startled, the drone stepped back.

This action tore its leads away, forcing an improper disconnect.   It registered significant discomfort in its interface equipment and stood there for a moment in shock, staring at a few of the tiny, delicate pins which had twisted in the sudden pull from Divide.  They…hurt.

This was, however, not as strange to it as the reeling signals generated by the loss of a receiver, bouncing back error after error in the download it had been initiating.  

“What the…?”  The mech on the floor asked.  

It could only shake its head in response.

Divide’s fall had not been expected.  It knew it should plug back in, but with one of its connectors damaged it did not know what to do.  There was not a protocol for this. It had assumed that shutting off the subject’s motor controls would have suspended Divide in an unmoving stasis.  Some motion, however, was apparently needed to remain upright.

The drone was not used to this.  It did not have top-heavy paneling or wheels that would cause an unbalance, as mechs did who were able to transform.

“Was that you?”  Divide asked, his vocalizer completely operational despite the fact the rest of his movement had been nullified.  

It nodded, but it did not yet know what to do.

“Can I get a little help up, then?  Transfer errors happen, but…well. I seem to be stuck.”

With as many errors as it was still attempting to resolve, it merely shook its head.  Assisting Divide would be counter-productive.

“It isn’t like a drone to leave a task half-finished, you know.  I‘m sure Ratbat wouldn‘t want one of his guests stuck on the floor.”  

It took a moment to register that Divide might have been trying to reason with it, but that did not change the situation at hand.  In moments, the final errors would be sorted through and it would be capable of resuming its functions. Until then, Divide would be unable to move.  

“Please.  All you have to do is connect back in and let your firewalls down.  I should be able to fix the rest if I can copy your protocols.”

Slowly, the drone took a step back towards its subject, looking over Divide to see where his connection port had fallen, intending to connect back in but not intending to do as Divide was instructing.  

Inconveniently, the port it needed was now underneath the crumpled form.

“Oh.  Oh, I see.  Your inputs are broken.”  

Glancing back down to the twisted pins at the end of its forearm, it tilted its head down at Divide, confused.  Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, Third Nexus Council, had never spoken to it like this before. It was not used to being addressed with statements that weren’t orders or weren’t questions, and it did not know how it was appropriate to act.  

It did, however, know it needed access to the other’s connection port.  It could use the inputs on its second arm to finish its task.

Shifting its balance carefully, it lifted one solid, well-crafted leg, and pushed its foot against Divide’s shoulder.  This was unfamiliar movement, but it was not incapable of adapting to new situations. Apparently successfully, it watched with a measure of interest as Divide’s body shifted and lay prone, exposing the open wrist plug.  

Bright white optics looked up at him and whirred into focus.  

It did not like the sudden stare and stepped back.  

“I know it’s not the usual situation for you, and you probably don‘t have orders for this,” the prone mech said.  “But it will be okay. Just connect back in, and I‘ll help.”

It shook its head cautiously, and waited to see what Divide would attempt next.  If his optics had not been affected by the movement lock, it was possible that other systems continued to operate, as well.  Judging by the continuous hum coming from within his chassis, his engine was still functioning, and the whirr of his processor could still be heard.

That was the part which it was most concerned about, as that was the part it needed operational.  The rest should have remained still.

“You can‘t possibly be afraid.  Drones aren’t programmed with that emotion.”

It shook its head again, confirming the subject’s hypothesis but not dwelling on it for long.  More important was the fact that Divide’s position had not changed. If the mech was still a potential threat he was not showing it.  If nothing but his optics was still operational, then it had no further reason to delay.

Slowly, it started towards him again.  

When no additional movement happened, it crouched over Divide, tucking the broken interface arm against itself to prevent Divide from looking at it again.  

That…unnerved it, somehow.

However, with Divide still prone and no further obstacles presented, it reconnected its functioning jack to the open port with ease.  

Beyond the synchronization of their signals, it noticed that the firewalls on Divide’s end had built back up significantly.  Using the same medical pass as before would now be ineffective, so it chose another back door from its list of possibilities and slid underneath the heavy protections once again.  

“S-Slag, what are you doing?  I said put down your firewalls, not-- Hey .  Stop that.  You can’t…”

Inside, it was hit with a wall of fear.

Nearly startled enough by this to disconnect again, the drone quickly queued up a new list of protocols, attempting to find a method of circumventing the unexpected emotion.  The networks that it typically browsed through did not contain obstacles of this manner, nor did they attempt to talk with it, making its current attempts at initiating a database search more difficult than it had anticipated.  

Connecting to mechs was different than connecting to machines.

“Oh.  Oh frag , you were ordered to do this, weren’t you.  This is…this is stupid. You don’t need to hack into my head; I’m already giving Ratbat everything he asked for.  What more could he want?”

Not used to being asked a question while integrated with another system, the drone found itself answering.

Two original copies of music composed and arranged by designation: Divide for Assemble.

It started to list its current outstanding orders, and then stopped.  It had no need to provide this information. All it needed was to search within its given parameters, locate what had been asked of it, plant the provided virus, and disconnect.  

“Those were already part of the deal,” the other pleaded, softly.  “You don’t need to go probing for them.”

Previously stated variable: not distinct among a comprehensive list of objectives.

It had other tasks, after all, besides what it had told Divide.  Currently, the task it was considering was a complete stasis-lock in order to prevent further distractions while inside.  It was not used to behavior like this.

However, activating a complete stasis within unfamiliar systems would be processor intensive, and require additional time to implement and work around.  In the interests of efficiency, it would be best to ignore Divide and continue its tasks in order of priority.

As if aware of this decision, the fear it had been feeling from the red mech steadily intensified.  

The drone noted the fear, and was finally able to shunt the emotion off into a secondary system so it could begin performing a full search.  The data it needed had a higher probability of occurrence in recent memory tracks, so it ranked the current date as its top origin marker and continued onward into the past.  

Divide was speaking again, more urgently, repeating statements over and over which the drone promptly dismissed.  It considered shutting down all audio receptors to prevent further distraction. However, losing audio receptors would have left it at a disadvantage should it be contacted otherwise, so it kept them operational and decreased priority on all wavelengths associated with Divide’s voice.  

The fear grew, becoming flavored with a hint of desperation.  

It…recognized this.  

It recognized both emotions, and categorized them, and stored them for later consideration, trapping them as data to be analyzed and purged.  It could not, however, deny the familiarity it felt towards both sensations, and it could not deny the electric jolt of confusion that shot through it at being able to identify fear.

It was a drone.

There was nothing for it to fear.

It performed its tasks, and it performed them well.  It had performed them well for the 2.839 stellar cycles it had been operational for Ratbat Holdings.  It grew in efficiency with every completed instruction and with every new search algorithm it designed, and it had only required a memory wipe once.  No other drone in Ratbat Holdings had required so little maintenance. No other drone had achieved its levels of success. Its only setback currently was that it had, somehow, lost a degree of efficiency between what it was capable of now and what it had been capable of before the memory wipe, but it knew it would work its way back to that previous state given sufficient time.

So why, then, had a memory wipe been needed in the first place?

Why was it dealing with decreased efficiency, now?

What erroneous algorithms had it manufactured previously that its owner had felt were worth the loss?

Locating the first of its required data, it abandoned those thoughts and proceeded to download the songs that Ratbat had been looking for.  Divide, it registered, was still protesting, still activating the occasional firewall or redundant loop inside his processor to put the drone off track.  However, these were only of minor annoyance, and each encounter was dealt with swiftly. It had been built to do this, it just had not been ordered to until now.

Finding additional songs beyond the ones it had been instructed to locate, it downloaded them, sliding them smoothly and carefully into Ratbat’s musical database without making a copy for himself, preserving the origination code.  It was aware of the importance of such a code in determining the owner of each song. It had, in fact, very recently been analyzing several origination codes, attempting to determine why the importance-rich Assemble remix seemed to point back to itself.  

It was aware that it had a report pending in relation to that.

It was additionally aware that there were more than a few numbers within its own origination code that matched Divide’s.  

The possibility arose, then, that the remix might have carried a corrupted or altered code, which had erroneously pointed towards itself as the composer.  

However, it was not alone in this consideration.

Divide, additionally, had performed an extensive trace on the song and had arrived at the same code, determining that someone at Ratbat Holdings had been the ‘source’ of the remix.  Divide had arrived at this conclusion despite lacking top of the line equipment, instead making use of the transmission tower that broadcasted the other Assemble songs. He had spent considerable time examining the remix, and decoding the remix, and searching for original copies of the remix, and the remix was not, it realized, the only song he had been seeking out.

Curious to review his other findings, the drone did not immediately move on.  

Instead, he delved further, finding records of multiple origination codes, some sharing key strings of numbers, others entirely different.  Each code was organized congruently with music, starting as far back as there were records and continuing forward to the current date. Divide’s own compositions were present.  So was the remix that the drone had supposedly made. So were a number of pieces that it recognized as historically significant, which it confirmed with a quick secondary search of Ratbat’s personal database.  

There were other categories as well, containing numbers and equations that it did not recognize, each relating back to the origination codes and the songs, providing a third dimension of data that completed a new graph.  It was connected, somehow.

It was connected in a way that pinged its match of ‘interest,’ causing an error of the same scope as the remix had caused.  This ‘interest’ could not be attributed to the match list it had been supplied by Ratbat Holdings.

This ‘interest’ came from somewhere else.

This ‘interest’…was its.

Immediately it began downloading the database of music from Divide, taking the notes and correlations and origination codes for itself.  It did not have the resources, now, to begin comparisons or to locate the underlying frequency, but once it was plugged back into the transmission tower it would.  

It would determine what Divide had been up to, and it would report it diligently.

As always.

For now, it had other work to do.  The viral strain still needed to be uploaded, and it had only completed searching through 8.56% of Divide’s processors.  There were additional outstanding orders, as well, to replace the memory files of the subject’s visit to reflect the outcome that had been expected, and to let him peruse through Ratbat’s database and take what he wanted.  

Divide was to be released.  He would not recall what had transpired inside his own head, and he would not know that the drone had downloaded his history.  He would continue on until the quarantine virus took its effect on his coolant systems. Then, he would perish.

The drone did not understand the purpose of this, but it did not matter.  These were its orders. Information would not be wasted, and data would not be lost, and that was all that was of any concern.

Divide’s begging would influence nothing; neither would his screams.

Only his memories were of any interest, safely stored within the drone to be dissected and analyzed and reported as it always would.  

It would do as it was ordered.

It would not go through a memory wipe, again.

Chapter Text

Megatronus was exhausted.  

It had been a long double-shift working with Perceptor, tweaking the experimental drone processor code and cataloging the ways in which their current drone advanced.  He hadn’t been expecting to remain at the factory for both shifts, but despite how tired he was now, it hadn’t been a worthless venture.

The drone was learning.  It was developing quickly, adapting its new coding in manners that showed how drones could be as versatile as real Cybertronians, as unpredictable, and just as varied in their forms.  Even while knowing who the original imprint had come from, Perceptor had commented frequently on how different the drone became each solar cycle. It had different preferences, different values, and an entirely different personality.  As time went on and it perceived the world around it, it even had a different spark.

It changed.

It made everything that Megatronus was working for useless.  Without knowing the exact modulations of its spark, of all drone’s sparks, he wouldn’t be able to write the program that could control them.  Thus far, he wasn’t even certain where to start.   Perceptor was the one who reviewed each line of code that Megatronus sent to him, and Perceptor was the one who added the variable for the spark each time.  His tactic of asking directly for the spark signature had resulted in Perceptor merely smiling, mentioning something about it being a ‘trade secret,’ and leaving Megatronus completely in the dark on how to insert that variable himself.  Unless he could discover a way to specifically change the drone’s spark, there were only two things that he could do.

Either he needed to convince Perceptor that this ‘sentience shell’ they were working on should be a part of the standard drone designs, or he needed to get a master chip programmed and snuck into the manufacturing line, where it could be copied and implanted in all drones while their sparks were new and unchanged.  

The problem with the first option was time.  Perceptor was too thorough with his research to okay any programming that hadn’t been exhaustively tested, and testing to make sure their changes were still within the legal drone parameters was going to take lunar cycles.  The factory was, thankfully, going through a lull caused by some pending legislation, which had given him and the spark technician plenty of free time while nothing new was produced.

He did not know how long this lull would last, however, and there were still too many questions unanswered about the behavior of the drone and its variable spark.

This forced Megatronus to consider the second option of stealing the oscilloscope and reprogramming the chips himself.  He could, he hoped, get the device off of Perceptor for long enough to take a spark reading on one of the military drones that was waiting to be finished.  If he could get that reading then he could write whatever coding he wanted, test it, and make a master chip. Then, all he would need to do would be to sneak the master chip onto the processor production line to be copied, and that would be it.  The military drones would have his sentience shell. Depending on what programs he wrote, they’d either be cognizant enough to cause worry in whoever bought them, or they’d be under his control and he could make them do whatever he wanted.

Either way, he’d win.

Either way, he’d be able to bring the drone industry crashing down around its unthinking owners.

The problem with sneaking a master chip onto the manufacturing line, however, was that the chips were made off-site.  He knew the name of the factory that milled them, and he knew where it was. He’d offloaded enough palates of processor chips that he had the address memorized, but that wasn’t really the issue.

The issue was having a means of getting them to this factory in Altihex.  

He’d mulled over that for a long while, quietly.  He’d stayed at the factory past the end of his shift, working, plugged into the factory computer, running simulation after simulation, wondering if there was anyone he knew in Altihex who could get him inside.  

There wasn’t.  

Of course there wasn’t, because the only mechs he knew outside of Kaon were on teams he’d fought against in the arena.  He’d been to Altihex before. He’d been there hundreds of times, but he had always been there to fight.  

No one he fought could possibly know anyone who worked inside the processor facility.  Even if they did, miraculously, they’d never live for long enough to tell him.

That wasn’t how the arena worked.

He’d need to have a master chip ready to give them, besides, and that wasn’t going to happen until he could get his hands on the oscilloscope.  

There were no choices that were simple anymore, and either option could easily lead him to fail.  Whether he trusted Perceptor to put the processors, or whether he took action to ensure they were put in himself, there was a risk.

It would have been so much easier to just burn down the factory and walk away.

That, however, would have been a temporary solution at best.  There were too many entrepreneurs out there with money to rebuild it.

He’d stayed later at the factory, regardless, hoping to hedge his bets by working toward both goals, doing extra tests with Perceptor to speed up the process and also waiting for him to get tired and leave. He’d figured that if the scientist went home before him, maybe he could just pick up the oscilloscope and that would be that.  

That plan had failed.

He should have known that it would fail.

Perceptor had always continued working when Megatronus’s shifts were over, and he’d always been at work already when Megatronus came in.  He was too dedicated to give up while anyone else was there still going. Thus, the later it had become, the quieter Perceptor had grown, and the harder it had been for Megatronus to keep concentrating on his task.

“You’re going to miss your train, I think,” the teal-striped mech had said, instead, glancing over to him when it had been quiet for too long.

“I already missed it,” he replied with a growl, and ran the program once again.

When he looked back up, Perceptor was still watching him.  

They’d stared blankly at each other for a while.

Then, Perceptor had just nodded, and stood.  “I’m going to go recharge. You should join me.”

Tired enough to not argue, Megatronus had finally shut his program down, and rose to follow the scientist.  The oscilloscope was back in the other’s grip, going into a special drawer on his desk, locked inside with a code that must have been transmitted since Megatronus couldn’t see anything typed, keyed, or plugged in.  He wasn’t going to get hold of it now, and he wasn’t going to get hold of it tomorrow. The only other option was crawling into a garage for some rest, and at the moment, that was exactly what he wanted to do.

However, that wasn’t what ended up happening.

When Perceptor had opened up the staff room and showed him the luxurious berths the spark technicians used when they were off-duty, Megatronus had only stared.

It had been the furthest thing from a garage that he could have imagined.

He’d seen nothing like it before, nothing to compare to the rows and rows of actual berths, spring-supported for one’s root-mode instead of the alt-mode slabs that he used in his own apartment.  These were on-site barracks, specifically made for mechs who never left their jobs. They were quiet. Restful.

Luxurious.

Small.

Most of them were occupied by other dozing mechs, but no one spoke to him.  No one rose to tell him to leave, and no one questioned his right to be there.

With nowhere else to go and with Perceptor watching him curiously, Megatronus had found one that was almost large enough for him to fit.  He’d drifted off almost immediately, surprised by how easy it was to get comfortable on a real berth.

After that, he knew returning home would feel completely strange.  

Working two shifts back to back with a night in the technician’s suite had made the outside world seem far away.  It had become unusual to look at his surroundings and not see four walls and a ceiling. Even riding the transport home was foreign, filled with mechs who stared blank stares and clutched onto empty lunch-cubes or grumbled when they were jostled.  Stepping off to face the dark, badly-lit streets of the Underground was even worse.

This was supposed to be home.

This was supposed to be familiar.

Now, it was becoming a bad memory that he faced each time that his shift ended.  He’d spent more cycles in the factory than he’d spent out of it since he’d began, and it was becoming easier and easier to see why spark technicians lost touch with the outside world.  

They didn’t see it much.

He’d never thought on it before, never really looked at the rust on the walls, never really paid attention to the way that the common-room light flickered when he pulled into his apartment for the night.  

Twenty-four floors above street-level, he’d felt rich the first day that he’d rented it.  There was enough room for his massive frame, enough room for the minibots to have their own den, enough room for his current team-mates and for team expansions, enough room to build the toughest gladiator crew in all of Kaon.

There’d even been enough room for Clench, who was waiting for him just inside the entryway.

“What, are you trying to pull double-shifts now?” the dark mech growled, leaning on the frame of the common room door as Megatronus rolled in, gripping the edge roughly enough to leave a dent.  “Or are you seeing some High Tech femme you just met, schmoozing with the crowd?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”  Megatronus sneered and pushed the door closed behind him, not happy to be confronted with a bad attitude before he’d even made it inside.

“Only if you shared,” Clench chuckled nastily, shuffling forward into the room, plopping heavily onto their single bench.  Megatronus tried to ignore the way it groaned beneath the old mech, and he tried to ignore the dirty stains of oil on the floor.  They hadn’t used to bother him. “Sure is better than imagining you up there, listening to old Stick Shift, being all ‘yes sir’ and ‘no sir’ and ‘anything you say, sir’ for 30 cycles a day.”

“I don’t work for Stick Shift anymore.”  Retreating to the counters at the edge of the room, Megatronus pulled the empty cube out of his sack-cloth, lamenting the loss of his old lunchbox and the way it fit snugly inside his frame.  “I’ve been working with Perceptor, instead.” His radio joined the cube a second later, and he tossed the sack aside.

“I don’t remember any bosses named Perceptor…”  Clench rubbed at his legs, and Megatronus caught the sound of metal grinding over metal as the old mech thumbed his joints.  

Fumbling in a cabinet, he pulled a pair of batteries out.  “He’s not a manager, Clench.” Slapping them down beside the radio, Megatronus sighed, exhaling hot air to cool his engine from the long walk home.  He felt thin, underfueled, and stretched, like he was glancing at his own life through a dirty windshield, trying to make sense of this place that used to be familiar and suddenly wasn’t.  “He’s a spark-tech.”

For a moment, there was laughter.

Then, the laughter stopped.

When Megatronus glanced over Clench was frowning at him, watching him, lit by the flickering bulb that still hung in the middle of the room.   Clench held his hand out, beckoning once. “Toss me the radio,” he said, his tone flat.

Megatronus complied.

Clench caught it, expertly, cradling it gently for a moment before he deftly removed the near-dead batteries, shook them to reactivate the chemicals inside, and put them back in.  He leaned back, trying to relax on the worn-out bench, his shoulders rubbing black marks onto a black-smudged wall, scraping paint from bare sheetrock that might have once been white.   

“I scheduled you a fight next week,” the old mech murmured, shifting the radio off of his lap and running a claw over it lazily.

“You did what ?”  Megatronus tensed, caught off guard by what had just been said , his thoughts about the surface scattering like rays of light lost in the Underground.  His hand fell down on the counter, harder than he’d been intending. He didn’t want to deal with this on top of everything else, and it aggravated him beyond belief that Clench would dare.  He sure as slag did not have the time to fight right now, or the energy, and he couldn’t go through the overhaul that he’d need to look like an arena combatant again without missing at least a few shifts at the factory.  That would cost him his job with Perceptor.

“Don‘t shout, you fragger!  The others are trying to recharge!”  Clench growled at him.

“They’re used to the noise,” Megatronus rumbled, low, his anger slowly simmering as he rebutted the change in subject.  The pair of new batteries he’d pulled out of the cabinet were rolling towards the counter’s edge, dislodged by the vibrations of his aggravated engines.     They hit the floor, loudly.

“Maybe they used to be, back when there was noise around here.  Right now, things seem downright polite , like we’ve got some kinda company mech sponsoring us--”  

That was the last straw.  Whirling, Megatronus felt the extra fuel kick through his systems, and felt the blazing heat in his blue optics shine.  “This is not about who I work for, or what I’m doing. This is about you making plans without talking to me first, Clench.”  He hissed, striding toward his partner with unpleasant retributions on his mind.  “I bring in the money, I call the shots around here, and I say I’m not ready to fight yet.” Placing a knee upon the bench he shifted his weight as Clench tried to duck, slamming a palm into the other’s torso and shoving him back against the wall.  “The last thing that I need right now is some invalid trying to be second-guessing me--”

Unimpressed, Clench stared blankly at him.  “They got into a brawl last night. When you didn‘t come home.”  He winced after a moment, one hand grasping onto Megatronus’s wrist, the other gripping tightly on the radio beside him.   “So if you’re gonna kill me, kill me, but while this team is counting on you, you’re still going to have to fight.”

Frowning, Megatronus released his pressure but not his grip, still pinning Clench but curious.  “Rumble and Frenzy?”

“What other ‘they’ do you think I mean, of course Rumble and Frenzy!  They were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and someone went and mentioned how washed out you’d become, and the next thing you know I can hear screaming from two streets away.”

“You weren’t watching them?”  Megatronus rumbled, his engine kicking up a gear, ominous.  “Isn’t that what I pay you to do?”

“No.  You don’t pay me to do a damned thing.  You’re supposed to be out fighting, winning me enough bets that I can fix these busted legs of mine.  That was the deal, since I was well-connected enough to get you that stupid job that you refuse to come home from, you worthless slag.”  

“Do not call me that!” Megatronus roared, his hand suddenly at Clench’s throat, wrapping around hydraulics.  “You owe me everything.”

Clench glared, unwavering, defiant, the spark of combat in his eye…

But when Megatronus squeezed his throat the spark vanished, fading quickly as the old mech glanced away.  “Yeah. Yeah, okay,” he wheezed, his vocalizer straining underneath Megatronus’s grip.  “You win.”

“I never lose, ” he whispered, and let go.

“You will, if you don’t fight , ” Clench growled, staring forlornly at the one, dingy window in the whole apartment.  It gaped open, panel-less, looking out at only the grey wall across the street. “They will forget about you.  They’ll forget you ever existed. ”  His features contorted, in pain, his hand gripping tighter on Megatronus’s wrist as he struggled, coughing on exhaust.  “Like they forgot about me.”

He let go, completely, and sagged onto the seat, hating it when his old partner talked about that.

“Don’t…get all sentimental on me, Clench.”  

“I know.”

The room grew silent.

Frustrated, Megatronus turned away, watching the cube lying on the counter, listening to the occasional hitch from Clutch’s engine as the other struggled to synchronize his intakes once again.  Outside, he could hear a pair of flat-mates arguing, low voices echoing up from the alleyway, playing counter-point to the rumble of tires on long-broken roads.

It was home, here.

It was…familiar.  

It even felt good to argue with Clench.  

But it wasn’t everything, anymore.  Some part of him kept thinking about drones, and formulas, and clean, quiet berths, and one night living the way every mech deserved to live.  

He wanted that.

As much as he wanted this.  Somewhere along the way he’d just lost track of which world he was living in, and which world was pretend.

“Are they alright?” he asked, finally, glancing toward the garage they’d set up for the minibots.  

Clench straightened, slowly, and reached out for the radio once more.  “Found ‘em underneath a pile of mechs that reached the ceiling. They were still kicking and biting when I dragged them out.”  A dark smirk spread on his dull faceplates, and Megatronus found it all-too-easy to imagine the scene as it had occurred.

“You’re not as useless as you pretend to be, now are you, Clench.”

“Maybe.  Maybe not.  At least until another gasket blows, and then who knows what you’ll do with me.”  He flipped on the radio, getting every drop of juice from the old batteries as he adjusted for the stations, setting it on the highlights of last weekend’s match.  

“I’ll put you out of your misery, Clench.”

“No, you’ll buy me a damned pair of legs, first.  You promised.” He turned the radio up, focusing on a match between Undercurrent and Titan, the gladiators of the Altihex games.  

“Maybe.  Maybe not,” Megatronus parroted, and leaned back on the bench to hear the play-by-play.  It was what he and Clench had used to do together, when he’d been fighting regularly. Listening to the matches was better than arguing, anyway…even if their banter had a familiar life of its own.  Nothing was easy in the Underground, not even conversation.

Besides, the fights still had a way of getting his blood to boil, and this one was no different.  Titan…he knew of, remembering the mech’s ascension through the ranks. He was a size class bigger than Megatronus, himself, with processor enhancements that made him fast, and powerful.  There’d been rumors he was sponsored by some high-tech company mech in Altihex, shelling credits into making an arena champion, but all that rumor really did was change the odds. Titan was a mech that knew how to win.  

It didn’t matter why.

The announcers talked him up the way they always did, giving statistics about his weight and reaction times, listing off numbers that had been updated since the last time Megatronus had listened in.

With a shock, he realized how long that had been.

With less of a shock, he realized how little difference it made.  The imagery came back easily, and Megatronus was lulled by the sounds of it, the sensations of it, and the stellar cycles of learning how to predict an opponent’s actions by description alone.

Titan would move first.

He’d step in, sliding to pin his opponent’s foot beneath his own and slam them to the ground.

Undercurrent would be out of the way before that, though, incredibly maneuverable, able to dart through Titan’s guard to pick at him with twin blades, expertly slicing through hardwiring to try and bring the mammoth fighter down.  That technique never worked perfectly, Megatronus knew. He knew it well enough from experience, always being on the receiving end of smaller, faster mechs. The announcer called the shots as he considered that, watching in his mind with optics shuttered:  Titan, catching the other off-guard, a single swing of his mallet taking Undercurrent’s leg out of commission. The smaller mech rebounding, going for the neck, the crowd roaring as Titan brought a fist to bear…

“Who am I fighting?”  Megatronus whispered, feeling his gears twitching in anticipation, not needing to know the outcome of the fight.  It didn’t matter.

“You’re fighting Titan.”  Clench purred, turning the radio off.  “From Altihex.”

Megatronus’s optics opened, glancing over to Clench, wondering if he’d known about the processor chips that Megatronus needed so badly, wondering if this was a setup from the start or just some strange coincidence.  

Clench winked, once, letting one optic go dark before it lit again.  “You have to come back to the ring, Megatronus. To finish what you’ve started, where you belong.”  Where he had to belong. Where he knew he belonged, just listening to the fighting once again. “You’re needed, here.”  

Megatronus snorted.  “Yeah, because you’re terrible at watching minibots.”  

“Maybe that too.”  Clench grinned, handing him the radio.  “Look,” the old mech sighed, “I know you’re obsessed about this drone thing.  And…maybe you’re right. Maybe this system has been going on too long, and dragged a lot of good mechs down with it.  But things were good for us, here. You were winning .  They gave you a name… ”

“I took that name, Clench.”

“Yeah, but it’s only gladiators that get them.”

Megatronus looked down at his radio, remembering Perceptor, remembering the look in the scientist’s optics when he’d talked about coming up with a name.  He’d talked about so many things…about the Technical Institute, about re-classification, about the breakthroughs they were making with drones, and Megatronus had nearly believed him.

He had believed him.

He…still…believed him.

But it wasn’t about Megatronus’s name.  Megatronus had a name.  He’d earned that name, with no one’s help but his own, with no assistance from sponsors, with no favors and no back doorways.  

“You don’t belong up there.”  Clench prompted…

…and Megatronus frowned.

“I do belong up there,” he whispered, his voice hardened.  “We all do. Not with the mechs who rule the surface, no.  But simply because ‘up there’ is where we want to be.  Where we deserve to be…”  He caught himself, looking out the window, feeling the change in pressure as the smallest of breezes drifted by.  “And I’ll belong up there for no reason other than because I willed it.”

“Gonna take a lot of change before that happens, gladiator . ”

Megatronus laughed. “Oh, yes.  It will. But that’s what I’ve been working for.”

“Mmm.”  Clench nodded, pushing himself to his feet slowly, letting his gyrator settle him into balance as he steadied himself on the wall.  “And is it paying off?”

“When do I fight?” he whispered, avoiding the question completely as he stood.

“Six cycles from today.”  

Megatronus nodded, gripping the small radio in his large hand, and moving toward his recharge chamber.  “Then ask me again, six cycles from now,” he laughed, “and I’ll have your answer.”

Chapter Text

For the drone, something had changed.

It had performed the memory download on Divide as it had been requested.  It had downloaded the two original copies of Assemble songs from the subject’s processor as well, along with several other pieces it had found.  It had taken data tracks of significant events in Divide’s history. It had planted a virus.

It had, in essence, performed all of its tasks.  It had even confirmed that the composer of the remixed song matched its own earlier findings, and ensured that Divide’s memory had been wiped of all traces of its intrusion.  

Entering the hardware of a functioning mech had not been significantly more difficult than entering the hardware of a computer system, apart from the emotions.  Once it had been able to filter those, the process had been routine.

Divide, once awake, had questioned the sudden difference between his internal clock and the time he last remembered it being, but the drone had been prepared for this and sent an apology as directed for using an incorrect interface protocol and shorting out their lines.

The apology had been accepted, and Divide had proceeded onward as he initially intended, perusing Ratbat’s musical database as if nothing had happened, sampling music and downloading copies of origination codes and songs that were of interest to him.  When Divide was done, the drone had signaled for a pair of guards to escort him out. It had stared after the mech as he left, puzzling over the disparate nature of the songs that he’d picked.

Then, it had returned to the transmission tower and plugged in.

Now, it was sorting through the files, parsing out what might be useful and archiving the rest.  It was re-attached into its terminal, buffered by the presence of powerful processing equipment, utilizing program after program to efficiently categorize the entries sampled from Divide’s memory banks.  

While completing its priority assignment, it was still a part of the tower’s overall operations, capable of resuming control over incoming and outgoing signals, directing them with 100% accuracy to their intended locations.  It could section processing power from the massive internal computers, directing search engines to comb through either the musical database it had taken from Divide, or to scour all bandwidths for information on the origination codes the database contained.  It was performing the tasks that were assigned to it, and performing its base duties as well.

It was content.

It was content, except for one anomaly that still periodically drew its attention away.

The remix still was present on the air.

The remix was present, and now there was undeniable evidence pointing back toward the drone as the composer.  Somehow, against all logic, it had created the same song which had earlier drawn its processes into recursive loops.  

That behavior should not have been within its programming.  Despite the fact that it had extensive knowledge in signal processing and waveform interpretation, it did not understand inherently how music was constructed.  It understood style and it understood syncopations and it understood key signatures and measures and hundreds of other pieces that allowed it to better examine music and match it to other music, but it did not understand how to put those elements together to create a song.  Learning those protocols would have taken significant research. Choosing to execute them would have required a priority command from Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, Third Nexus Council.

It would have needed to download information on song construction as well, which would have taken bandwidth that would have otherwise been employed in accomplishing its base assignments.

None of this was possible for it to have done.

If it had been previously been given an order to learn how to make music, then Ratbat would not have been curious about the music’s source.  If it had downloaded the programs on its own, then there would be records of decreased bandwidth and insufficient efficiency.

However, the tower’s records showed no loss of bandwidth or efficiency before its memory wipe.

This made it uncertain how to proceed with its report.

It was aware that Senator Ratbat would be displeased with it, if it confirmed itself to be the composer.

It did not…want…this.  It did not wish to be reprimanded for an error it had not chosen to commit.  It did not desire for there to be errors, at all.

It was a custom drone.  It was supposed to exhibit maximum efficiency.  It was supposed to fulfill the needs of its owner regardless of its own comfort.

It didn’t like being aware that it possessed levels of comfort, at all.

It also didn’t know how it felt about composing songs.  

It had, however, obviously done so at one point.  Running through another playback of the remix with this information in mind, it could detect wavelength partials that were particularly pleasing to process.  Certain instances of frequency shifts reflected gaps that it used often in difficult encryptions, and the patterns of repetition were reminiscent of chaotic oscillations that it had previously found satisfying to decode.  

It was unlike other music it had processed.  It could not deny a certain amount of familiarity with the way the data had been used.  Strangely, it also could not deny that there were similarities within Divide’s music, as well.

Having the composer’s memory banks on hand made it significantly easier to recognize this.  Having the composer’s memory banks on hand also gave it an excuse to delay forwarding the report about the remix it had prepared for Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, Third Nexus Council.  After all, it could not be 100% certain that its conclusions were accurate until it had completed processing the data within. There was still the possibility, however slim, that the data it had taken from Divide had been manufactured or falsified, and that the drone was not the composer of the remix after all.

Taking additional time to investigate this would also postpone its eventual punishment.

However, beyond ascertaining its certainty about the composer and gaining additional time before punishment, it was beginning to suspect that there were other reasons to continue processing the musical databases that it had downloaded from Divide.

One of its standing orders had been to probe Divide’s processor for further items of interest.

Items of interest had been found:  The mech had been collecting origination codes.

As far as it could determine through an exhaustive network search, Divide’s database appeared to be the first database exhibiting a comparison of musicians’ origination codes.  

There was, however, a good reason for this.  An origination code was an identifying marker, used to determine both the initial creator of files and to act as an identifier when logging onto foreign systems.  Forging origination codes could, and had, allowed the drone access into networks that were prohibited. Forging origination codes into certain data could also make it seem as if the data had once belonged to someone of importance, which increased its perceived value.  

Research into origination codes was therefore prohibited, with previous offenders facing significant criminal charges for defacing an individual’s privacy and integrity.  Any significant collection of origination codes was also illegal to possess for similar reasons, which explained why it could not locate any other databases similar to Divide’s except the one possessed by Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, Third Nexus Council.

Technically, it realized, this meant that Ratbat’s personal music libraries were also illegal.  

However, that fact was surrounded by extenuating circumstances.  Ratbat’s libraries were extensive historical databases, carefully preserved and maintained.  If needed, he could have obtained a license to harbor them under that context, so long as he continued to keep them in pristine condition for archival purposes.

Divide’s library, on the other hand, was barely organized and in pieces, often with origination codes that had been copied by visual confirmation instead of being attached to the original song.  The music was not rare or historical in context, and its data lacked any value in terms of authenticity or unique instance.

It was difficult for the drone to tell what the purpose of the collection even was, other than to be illegal.

Senator Ratbat, it was sure, would find the dubious nature of the database to be of interest.

It found the database to be of interest, as well.

The songs within appeared to have significant datastrings in common.  However, given the method used to categorize them, comparisons weren’t easily possible.  Many of the songs had been collected haphazardly, interlocked with fragments of other memories.  Some of them had aged, others had degraded, and a few were even corrupt, inseparable from the instance of their capture.  They were grouped illogically, as well, arranged not by date or by song title or by composer, but by the second pointers within the origination codes.

This, it noticed, was incorrect.  

When organized by the second pointers, the frequency spectra of the songs began to show similarities.  There was a rhythm, of sorts, to the differential between high notes and low, between the rests and the crescendos.  Some of the music nearly aligned in this manner, despite the differences in tempo and chording.

However, it was not where the music aligned that was of interest.

It was where the music differed that was the key.

Taking this into consideration, it began running pattern matches between the origination codes themselves and Divide’s database of songs, treating the codes as if they were lines within the music instead of separate parts.  

Almost instantly, a new pattern began to form.

The songs themselves were notes, full spectrums of lines in the frequency domain that created an orchestra of sound.  The codes were keys. The gaps in data were rests and there were pieces missing somewhere out there, because it knew the notes to the chords and it knew the chords were lacking resolution.  

It was incomplete.

“That’s lovely,” a voice said, and the communications drone tried to turn.  “I don’t think I’ve heard something like that, before.”

A mech with teal stripes was standing nearby, looking at him from a computer monitor inside a tiny room.  

“I just found this one.  It was recorded on an old radio I bought at a garage sale in Iacon,” the communications drone said.  

It did not understand how it had spoken.  It did not understand where the small room had come from, or where the tower had gone.

The teal-striped mech was still looking at it, however, smiling as if nothing was wrong.  “I don’t know that I could visit a stranger’s garage, Divide. You never know what you’re going to find on old electronics, especially if they’re left over from before the Terrabyte outbreak.”

The communications drone smiled back with Divide’s mouth, and tapped its head.  “I have all the updated firewalls. Considering I don’t know how much longer I‘ll even be allowed to access the surface, it was worth it to me.”  Unable to move, the drone nevertheless found itself sitting down upon a nearby bench. “Besides, it might just be another piece of the puzzle. You said it was lovely, yourself.”

“Well, yes, but that doesn’t mean anything scientifically. You cannot base research off emotions.”

“Not unless I’m researching emotions,” it said, and the drone gave up resisting in order to let the corrupted memory-file play.  “Which I’m not, but it’s similar. Did you feel anything?”

“I…liked it.  Does that count?”  The other mech went back to typing on his console, but glanced up from time to time to show polite interest to Divide.  

“It does.  It counts for a lot.  You liked it, but can you tell me why? ”

“Because I like classical songs.”

“Yes, but why ?”

The teal-striped mech turned, and looked Divide up and down.  “’Why’ is precisely what a good researcher would ask. However, in this case, I’m afraid I cannot tell you.”

“Er…well.  Why?”

“Because I do not know.  I don’t know why I like certain music, but not others.  I don’t know very much about music at all, to be honest, and perhaps if I did I could answer your question.  For right now, however, I can tell you that it ‘resonates’ with me, and that if you’d like to know more about how music affects the spark, you’re going to have to find a way to measure it.”

The memory cut out.

Disoriented, the communications drone did nothing for five cycles of the tower’s internal clock, watching dropped data packets collect in the cache, logging errors it would have to rectify.  

It was back.

It had not left.

Searches that it had begun before entering the corrupted memory file had returned results, and inquiries on the status of messages were waiting in its queue.  Somewhere in its surprise at suddenly having a mouth, it had forwarded a set of error messages to the analyst. He had sent back a request for an explanation.

Finally managing to re-assert itself into the systems, the drone replied with an ‘all clear,’ and cancelled the error messages.  It picked up where it had left off, and continued passing data through the tower, cleaning up after its temporary absence.

It had lost its previous train of thought.

The report that it had started for Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, Third Nexus Council, was still pending.  A compiled list of data assembled from Divide’s databanks had been appended to the document, half-finished, and a summary of its own findings about the composer of the remix waited at the top.

It closed the file.

Something was wrong, and something was changing, and it was losing efficiency again.  

It didn’t know how, or why, or what had happened.  

It was able to ascertain that it had been sorting through Divide’s musical database when one of the songs had unlocked a corrupted memory.  It knew that much. It had been thinking about music and origination codes, and somehow that had opened a gateway into Divide’s mind that it could not control.

It would make certain not to do that, again.

Marking the corrupted memory, it exited the database.

Its 33 cycles were up.

It would continue, later.

For now, it was going to return to its docking closet, and it was not going to think, at all.

Chapter Text

The vote was pending.

It was pending, and Ratbat did not know which way it was going to go.  He had heard nothing about whether or not Senators Optarus and Decimus had decided to change their opinions, and his other reports indicated a near split among the rest of the Senate.  It frazzled him, to be this uncertain about a matter that was so important.

Of course, he looked no worse for the wear on the outside.  The new ‘polish’ feature he’d had upgraded onto his chair was surprisingly thorough, even if it didn’t quite compare to an expert’s touch.  He’d taken great pleasure in enjoying a few moments at sundown, listening to Divide’s unreleased singles over his expertly balanced speakers while he relaxed.

That had been perfection.

This waiting, in comparison, was imperfection.

If the Council agreed that Sentinel Prime must have their permission before mobilizing drone forces, it would be a significant victory for Ratbat.  Total military control would finally have been wrested from the exclusive domain of the reigning Prime, putting at least a little jurisdiction back in the hands of elected officials.  It would be the beginning of eradicating the ancient religious institution of Primehood, which served only to produce glorified figureheads who wielded powers that they did not know how to fully use.  

If the Senate was to continue entrusting Cybertron’s forces to a mech who was chosen by a relic passed down generation after generation, then they deserved to continue repeating the mistakes of the past.  It was too randomized.

There needed to be some order restored to the process, and there needed to be someone in control who better understood the needs of Cybertron.  Ratbat had a few ideas on how that should be done.

Relying on a General who had helped win wars eons ago was not one of them.

However, he had an opportunity to do something about that today .

Today, he could finally begin to put some of his political plans in motion.  Today, he could determine how the vote might be swayed, and could take whatever actions were necessary to ensure his victory.

Today, he would have lunch.

It was the first business day in the new lunar cycle, the start of the third quarter of sales.  For the 548 th stellar rotation in a row, he would be meeting with Optarus and Decimus to discuss the future of Cybertron, and how best to sway it.  They met like this at the beginning of every quarter, for better or for worse. When it was better, the three of them would gather to discuss various ways to improve their finances in the final quarter, or to talk about pleasing constituents inside of their districts, or to recommend a new architect for personal projects.  When it was worse, there tended to be heated debates, stirring arguments, and creative insults.

As much as he could find enjoyment in all of the above, he intended to use this time to determine how the senators would vote.

He had hoped that his previous deception had hindered their old plan to make the vote a draw, but he would not know for certain until the three of them had conversed.  It would likely not be the most pleasant of encounters given how he’d tried to set them at odds with one another, but this was not the first time he’d done so and it would hardly be the last.  It did not mean he couldn’t turn the outcome toward his advantage.

He needed their votes.  

He enjoyed the meetings, besides, even when times were rocky.  Both Decimus and Optarus always had insights that he could benefit from, and the locale produced an enjoyable beverage that softened the edge of sharp words without dulling one’s wit.

It was not a Vossian-brewed energon, but it was helped by the atmosphere of a stunning setting and exquisite service.  Granted, he would hypothesize that anything might taste better when served on the edge of the Rust Sea, in a restaurant at the top of a towering condo, separated safely from the intrusion of ancient particles by a vast chasm and an expensive force field.  He didn’t care to test the theory, of course, but he didn’t need to.  One could only purchase the beverage here, making the restaurant an attractive venue for its cuisine as well as its unique geography.

It had a spectacular view.

Ratbat could have admired it for that if nothing else.  It was aptly named ‘The Red Sky’ in barely pronounceable old vernacular, taking inspiration from the rich patina of iron deposits that remained from long ago.  The service was delightful, with matching servers who sported both the latest armorwork and a sharp wit, and the gossip was informative due to more than one aspiring politician residing in the expensive apartments underneath the restaurant.  It was also the only suitable establishment that was equidistant between the three senator’s districts, which had cemented it as their center of correspondence many, many cycles before.

In fact, the only point which prevented him from visiting more frequently was that it was difficult to admire the modern red décor when it clashed with his magenta finish.  

However, he could forgive them for that tonight.  He could have forgiven them for a great many errors indeed, because of the much more interesting and pertinent topic at hand.  The Red Sky, in keeping with a modern flair, had made an investment in drone servers. It was not a significant investment, seeing as how there were only five at work in comparison to the dozens that his factory had sold to other manufacturing plants, but it was a step forward nevertheless.  

Ratbat could hardly keep his engine from purring at this unexpected delight as he was seated at his traditional seat with the southern view.  With drones present, it was difficult to ignore how pervasive they were becoming. Whether or not Optarus and Decimus approved, the pair would have to acknowledge their presence regardless, and would have to see the impact that they made.  Drones would be everywhere, eventually.

There was no stopping that , regardless of how the vote went.  

It wouldn’t have been so long ago either that Decimus and Optarus might have been happy--at least outwardly--to share in his triumph.  The three of them had worked together countless times, counting each other’s successes in part as their own, contributing to one another’s campaigns or giving much-needed feedback.  He would have rather reveled in their quiet jealousy while they shared new and compelling drinks, plotting out the next way that they might make a shrewd investment.

It wasn’t unusual that this had changed, but he did not like it.  

“If it was possible to be fashionably early , Senator, you’d be the one to set the standard,” Optarus announced, settling into the seat on Ratbat’s right with a menu screen already in hand, a pair of long glider panels parting behind him to accommodate the chair.  The same two bodyguards that always accompanied Optarus settled down at a table behind them, adopting the nonchalant gaze of those who watched while pretending desperately to not be doing so.

“I enjoy this time alone,” he replied, simply, “in order to savor the moments before a special occasion.”

“This is hardly special,” the orange glider scoffed, and started scrolling through the menu.  “We do it at the start of every business cycle. It takes time away from other meetings I could be preparing for, but we do it nevertheless.  Is Decimus still coming?”

“He would not miss it.  That would be undignified.”  

“Primus forbid he does something insulting.  What does he think he is, a politician?”  

“He is a gentle-mech first.”  He was just as Ratbat’s progenitor had been: tradition-bound, gruff, and no-nonsense, mindful of out-of-date protocols that few others engaged in.  Ratbat had encountered some difficulty in learning to like him because of that similarity, especially when Optarus’s fast-paced, flashy lifestyle was more familiar.

Neither had been easy to get along with, though.

He suspected they felt the same way about him.

“It would not hurt for you to try some tact now and again, Optarus,” the third senator cautioned, approaching slowly, stopping a few feet before the table to assess them both.  Despite that the pair of them had arrived barely a few nanoclicks apart, Ratbat took care in noticing that they’d come from separate entrances.

That was interesting.

It was also interesting that Decimus took up position on Ratbat’s left, easing his dark treads into a seat across from Optarus instead of his usual place by the glider.  That was just as Ratbat had hoped.

“I think good friends like us can forgive a lack of tact from time to time,” Ratbat smirked, spreading his talons in welcome.  “A blunt edge does not pierce so easily.”

“No, but it’s twice as painful when it does,” Decimus sighed, and looked around for a menu.

Optarus’s fingertips closed tighter around the one that he was holding.

“Thankfully, nobody has come armed today.”  Ratbat noticed the pair of guards behind him perking up at these words, and was more than a little amused.  “We can, therefore, indulge in what our status has granted us: fresh energon, exciting company, and a spectacular view.”

“It’s been the same view for eons, Ratbat,” Decimus frowned, his dark frame sagging over his chair as his intakes cycled on a moment late.  “And the same company, too.”

Optarus huffed, the sheen of his orange plating catching the red from the window like a flash of fire.  “We aren’t as old as this rust, yet, Decimus,” he spoke icily, and Ratbat heard the meaning, clearly: ‘Or as old as you.’

It was harsher than expected.  Decimus’s experience as a senator had done the two younger models great credit when they were new to the political arena.  Although Ratbat found him difficult to work with, he had still imparted wisdom that Ratbat utilized on a daily basis, and funding which Optarus had used to climb to the status he held now.  If Decimus moved a little slower, or had difficulty upgrading to the newest software without a patch or two it was forgivable, because he maintained his appearance and did his district proud.  

There was no reason to call attention to his age.  

At least, no reason beyond the wedge that Ratbat had driven between them.  Had he gone too far, this time?

“If the view and the company do not please either of you, then I suggest drawing your attention to the menu, which has had the audacity to change,” he interjected as smoothly as possible, finding it odd to occupy the role of mediator against what used to be a united front.  With a gesture, Ratbat indicated for one of the wait-staff to approach with a menu for Decimus.

“It is not the only thing,” Optarus added, setting his menu screen down as far from Decimus as possible, watching the serving unit intently as it deposited a new one, bowed, and left.  “Were there so many drones here the last time we came?”

Ratbat had to specifically control his shoulder armor to keep it from lifting in pride at the drones being mentioned.  He didn’t, however, bother to disguise his smirk. “Not that I recall. They do seem to be quite pervasive, don’t they?”

“They do,” Decimus replied, and Ratbat was less than pleased with the scowl that rested on his faceplates.  “I see them when I go out these days, but they aren’t everywhere yet, thank Primus.”

“Do you dislike the thought of them, then?”  Ratbat asked, not surprised to find Decimus reluctant to face the advent of new technology.  

The older senator’s frown deepened.  “Don’t misinterpret me. I fail to see the difference between a drone and a common laborer, and I could care less which of the two was polishing my chrome.”  He picked up the new menu pad between thick, brown fingers, and forcefully punched in a selection. “However, I don’t like the idea that multitudes of drones can be controlled by one mech.”  Ratbat looked up from Decimus’s angry drink choice, and found he was the subject of the other’s glare.

This made him defensive, all-too-easily.

He knew what those particular words had been intended for.

He also knew that he shouldn’t take the bait, and that Senator Decimus had amazingly just given him the perfect opportunity to put forth his cause.

“I could not agree more,” he murmured, smoothly taking hold of his own menu as if nothing was amiss.  “Which is why I’ll be voting against Sentinel Prime having full authority over the drone armies we’ll produce.”

“Will you, now,” Decimus countered, the scowl lessening into an expression Ratbat was not familiar with.  “Over the drone armies we’ll produce.  Convenient wording, there, as it brings us into exactly what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Decimus!”  Optarus growled, and Ratbat had the distinct feeling that he’d been all-too-smoothly directed out of the topic he wanted to discuss.  

It was, however, not unexpected.  

He’d long guessed that other businessmechs were interested in obtaining pieces of the drone market, and he’d been waiting for Optarus and Decimus to make this move ever since their ploy to oppose his vote.  

“So you’re looking to open a drone factory in your district?” he asked openly, not disguising his guess.

Optarus, however, was the one to interject.  “We both are, which I have told Decimus over and over would be a terrible business move. Our three locations would be in direct competition with each other.”  The words were directed at Ratbat, but the speaker’s narrowed golden optics never left Decimus’s faceplates.

This was, apparently, what had placed a wedge between the two.

“He says this only because I’ve already started building my factory,” Decimus frowned, still engaging Ratbat.  “And he knows that I’d have an advantage he’d never catch up to.”

“You’d have an advantage if you weren’t utterly incompetent at understanding technological trends!”  Optarus countered.

“And I’ll keep my advantage, because you take too many risks.”  For the first time, Decimus smirked, ever at his best during one-on-one arguments.  “For instance, Ratbat, my young colleague Optarus had no intention of seeking out your advice.  He didn’t seem to understand how valuable it could be, to speak with a mech already in the know on distribution and…hmm…shall we say…particular legalities and political circumnavigation.”  

Ratbat recognized the beginning of a gambit when he saw one, and knew that Decimus was up to something.  “Did he, now,” he said, and carefully considered the other’s ploy. “I would, of course, be happy to offer a few pointers to such good friends of mine.”  The key, as always, was determining what everyone could want.  

Optarus glanced away, obviously frustrated with Decimus and finding the idea of assistance to be suspect.  Ratbat knew this by the way the other senator’s engines churned as he pulled out a thin, sleek datapad to look at, giving him something to seem distracted by in order to calm down.  Optarus did not trust, easily. He never had trusted easily.  He brought bodyguards openly to friendly soirées, ruthlessly investigated new technology for any way it could be utilized against him, and had a habit of personally interviewing every mech that applied to more than a minor desk position in his firm.  He was paranoid, and that made it hard for him to keep many allies.

The obvious solution, of course, was to suggest that Decimus and Optarus combine their resources and construct a factory together.  He knew this, and judging by the competitive sparkle in Decimus’s optics, he suspected the other senator knew this, too. They also knew, collectively, that Optarus would not go for any sort of merger that would take away his very meticulous control--not without having good reason to do so.  Not without having a greater threat, so to speak.

That, of course, was precisely why Decimus had chosen this bizarre way of broaching the subject to him.

Decimus needed Ratbat to be that threat.

Ratbat, in a way, already was.  

However, due to the wall that Ratbat himself had constructed between Decimus and Optarus, the latter wasn’t inclined to trust either of them at the moment.  Ratbat’s job, in essence, would be to make owning a drone factory sound difficult enough that Optarus would consider Decimus’s offer to help.

He wasn’t going to do this for free.

“For instance,” he began, “you do realize that you’d both have a greater margin for profit if the vote passes in favor of Council-controlled drones, do you not?”  It was more than an obvious bid to secure their votes, but given their interest it helped that his facts were solid. “If the Council has sway over the military units, then we’ll have an option of setting the price for them, including tax breaks--whereas if they belong to Sentinel, they are purchased under military contract for the lowest fee.”

Optarus looked up from his datapad, curious enough to rejoin the conversation but apparently not taking the bait so easily.  “What does that matter, if you’re the one already producing them?”

“Come now,” he smiled, openly, as a drone wheeled up to him with his selected drink.  “You don’t think he’ll stop at one batch, do you? Not with threats to our civilization increasing daily.”  Taking a sip, Ratbat settled his other hand back over the menu data pad. There were always external threats, of course, but he was thinking about the underclass in particular.  A significant ‘threat.’ “A factory would have to be built and ready with designs to be considered for the contract, however.”

“I already have a mech who’s made designs ,” Optarus snorted, reaching up to take his own incoming glass.  “Improving your base military drones into my galactic-class Vehicons.”

Ratbat’s optics shuttered closed for a moment, certain he had heard something wrong.  “Your what?”

“My Vehicons.  Vehicular combat units.”  Optarus turned his data-pad to set it upright on the table with the screen displaying a stylish, sleek concept of an advanced drone with a street-capable alt-mode.  “I can begin production as soon as I have a facility.”

“My combat units aren’t vehicles, Optarus,” Ratbat frowned, aware that the design he was viewing was very close in nature to the military units he’d started to produce.  He was not aware, however, of how Optarus had managed to get access to his factory’s designs. He was going to have to determine how that had happened, and via whom.

“That’s part of the improvement.”  Turning the screen back towards himself, Optarus’s glider panels slid contentedly along the edge of his seat as he returned to tapping commands into the datapad.

In his corner, Decimus was attempting not to laugh.  Ratbat did not find it funny.

“I suppose you’ve already contracted spark technicians, then?” he asked, instead, arching one optic ridge.  “Obtained the necessary permits to grant Core energy access? Filled out the reports that prove your ‘Vehicons’ satisfy the three terms of non-sentience?”  

The panels clapped against Optarus’s back.  “Not yet. But I’m sure I could take care of it…”

“Could you?  Have you ever met a spark technician?”

Now Decimus was laughing at the expression on Optarus’s face.  Ratbat had to admit that he would have taken greater pleasure in the glider’s low-spoken “No” if he weren’t still defensive about the idea of Vehicons.  

They were a good idea.

They should have been his idea.

However, he could still stand to benefit from them.

“I see that neither of you are fully researched on what is required.  The next batch produced, then, will go to me, unless…”

Optarus was seething, but he still could see the offer as it stood.  “Unless your vote passes. You want us to vote for your proposal.”

“It seems like such a small exchange compared to the additional profits that this venture brings.  I’m even offering to give both factories the first chance for the next contract, and my expertise as well.”

Decimus, finally, took the opportunity to intercede.  “Both factories, Ratbat?” It was more than a bit satisfying to see the sincere look of confusion on his faceplates, especially since he’d thought he’d been the one composing the symphony of their discourse.

“Considering that both of your factories will be so close to one another, it is to my advantage to foster your spirit of competition,” Ratbat explained, pleased with himself.  “Obviously the factory whose blueprints are forwarded to me first--including the special accommodations that the spark technicians will require--will be the factory that I attend to in helping finalize the construction.”

“But Senator Decimus has already started!” Optarus frowned, fingering a drink that had managed to become empty in the short time since he’d received it.  

“Then his advantage will be rewarded…unless a better opportunity presents itself,” he gestured at the red drone which awaited them nearby.  “I am, after all, always in the market for good drone designs. Designs that I will be willing to pay extra for, if my motion should pass.”

Optarus’s fingers tightened around his finished glass.  

Decimus, as well, seemed tense…but Ratbat had, in the end, done exactly as he’d been asked to.  Optarus would now see him as the greater threat. With little hope of finishing his own factory in time, he’d either take his plans to Decimus and form a merger there, or he’d sell them to Ratbat and leave Decimus to build his own factory alone.

Either way, the two of them would still need his expertise.  They would need pointers on how to hire spark technicians, and pointers on how to avoid the very problematic restrictions on drone sparks.  They would still have little choice but to vote for his legislation if they wanted what he had to offer, and he knew they did.

He knew he’d come out on top.

And, really, he had no problem with the competition.  Whatever threat these Vehicons posed, he’d find a way to surpass them…and even if he did not, drones would continue to serve their purpose on Cybertron.  

He’d still make a fortune.

He’d still have a say in how they were used.

And, perhaps most importantly, he’d have the opportunity to set up his plan to remove Sentinel’s power and rid Cybertron of its abhorrent lowest class.

It was only a bit of a shame that it would be so hard to keep his friends along the way, but ah, well.

There was always next quarter to make amends.

Chapter Text

There was a flash.

Not far away, someone was working, leaning over an open torso casing under warm red light, tools extending from his arms as he delicately adjusted wires within.  

Here, it felt safe.

It felt comfortable.

It also felt wrong.

Drones did not dream.

It knew this, even as it watched the scraps of images that floated through its processor while it docked in the recharge closet.  

It heard itself humming a complicated tune with pure crystalline vocals, the melody familiar in its unfamiliarity, haunting like a memory that had been erased.  It witnessed a bright, violet flash of light and felt a rush of prickling sensations. It stared down an elevator shaft that had no bottom, and remembered the immenseness of the gaping void swallowing it whole.

These weren’t its experiences, but it recognized them.

These were only pieces of data, trapping it now as it had been trapped when it had unlocked other memory fragments from Divide.  So much of what it heard was music--impossibly old, simple tones with deep percussive beats, or newer acoustic waveforms of such complexity that they were influenced as much by the spaces they were played in as the instruments that made them.  

It remembered darkness.  It remembered being surrounded by mechs, crowded into an immense room, waiting.

It remembered light that blossomed on a stage.

It shouldn’t have remembered this at all.

Drones were not supposed to dream.

It considered the images nevertheless as the clock wound forward, chiming its release from the docking closet.  It considered them still as it disconnected from the wall and opened the door, walking out to the many-screened terminals of the transmission tower, wondering at the purpose of being able to formulate randomized data while recharging.  

None of the flashes had been connected.

None of them made sense on their own.

Together, they made even less sense.  Had the scenes originated from files left behind after its memory wipe?  Had they come from Divide? Had they been created from packets it had sampled while providing throughput for the tower?

It did not know, but it found the consideration distracting.

There was too much for it to accomplish to allow distractions such as this.

It stared at the two main inputs that would connect it back into the tower, and then looked at the ends of its arms.

One of its plugs was broken from the encounter with Divide.  Given that it was still capable of continuing its tasks with only minor loss of efficiency, this damage had not been tended to yet.  A request for maintenance waited, but had not been submitted due to the priority of its pending order from Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, Third Nexus Council.  

There were many tasks not tended to because of that order.

Although new assignments had been forwarded to it by Ratbat’s analysts, it had been unable to process them while completing its primary task.  Already, it had determined the composer of the remix. That part had been simple.

Now it was focused on the secondary orders it had been given simultaneously, which involved the data collected from Divide’s processor.  This part was much more complex. Working as diligently as possible, it had only been able to compile enough information to prepare a report on 59.6% of those findings.  Until it could fully process Divide’s music collection and determine the reason it existed, no other inquiries would be tended to.

This included its damaged inputs.

Despite the minor loss in efficiency, though, it did not mind tending to this particular assignment.  It was hard not to find the sheer amount of waveforms attractive, and lending order to the chaos of Divide’s storage methods had provided it with something akin to satisfaction.  The further it progressed in analyzing every fascinatingly complex pattern, the more it wanted to see the project through to its completion. It had been programmed for tasks like this.

This was its purpose.

Reaching out with its one functioning appendage, it connected to the tower and let its processor mesh seamlessly in parallel with Ratbat Holding’s systems.

It returned to the exact point where it had left off, examining the strange gaps in data that prevented it from finishing its report.  It knew that there was information missing here. Divide had been searching and collecting songs for 36 megacycles, long enough to have formed a bandwidth-intensive collection with maximum diversity.  That should have provided enough samples to compile a complete database.

However, it had not.

In addition to there not being enough samples to completely fill the database, there were not enough samples to even recognize the patterns that could indicate what was missing.  Divide did not appear to have an underlying algorithm for this.

Nevertheless, every sample he had chosen happened to fit.  

It was perplexed by how the musician had managed this, but it was also certain that it could decode the criteria Divide had been following and fill in the gaps given enough time and processing power.

Frustratingly, neither of those were elements that it possessed.  

The tower gave it more than enough capacity to sort through the database successfully, but there were too many songs for it to run continuous comparisons without impacting the tower’s throughput.  Additionally, combing for additional matching songs over Cybertron’s many networks would be close to impossible, as finding music that was not already included would necessitate a particularly invasive search.  There were options to compress the database for faster searching, but appropriating hardware to accomplish that would require authorization from Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, Third Nexus Council.

Already it had devoted 63.8% of the relay tower’s systems towards this task.  Borrowing more would result in a notable handicap.

This might attract unwanted attention.  Unwanted attention could result in a memory wipe.

Given that it already suspected a memory wipe once it revealed the composer of the remix, it did not wish to endure one prior to that.  

It needed to find another way to manipulate the vast information in the database.

That other way would be to narrow the criteria by searching for origination codes.

This would be useful for more than one reason.  Origination codes were decidedly shorter and simpler to process than the songs themselves, which meant they would not take as much processing power to sort and simplify.  It would also be faster to search for them outside of Divide’s database, which could help it to fill in the gaps.

However, the codes themselves were going to be harder to find.

Registries of origination codes could be located within the branches of the major Cybertronian banks, schools, and government institutions.  By nature, these documents were meant to be impossible to access. It could, theoretically, acquire enough bandwidth to attack each location one at a time, but it would be inefficient and incomprehensive.  Not every mech who had produced a song had attended school, possessed a bank account, or been included in a government census. A great many of them were already offline, and would not be accounted for regardless.

However, it did not know what else to do.  Unless there was a unified database…a central node…

A Node.

There was a flash behind its visor.

It had seen a Node before.  They existed near the Core of Cybertron.  

What the Core of Cybertron was, it was not certain, but it knew that the information it was looking for could be found within.  It remembered this.

It had dreamt it.

It did not like referencing its own dreams to complete a task.  There was little that was concrete about them.

If a Node existed, however, then where the information had come from was irrelevant.  Finding a Node would mean finding access to Origination Codes, and finding access to Origination Codes would mean completing its assignment.

Unfortunately, information about accessing Nodes was not readily available, and was referenced more often in theological documents than it was in historical research.  It knew by its dreams that Nodes were located in the Core but it did not know why Nodes were there, why Nodes would contain Origination Codes, or what was in the Core besides Nodes.

It was not sure why Divide would have known this, either, or if all of its dreams had even come from Divide.

The Core was the best lead it had at the moment, however, and so it was the logical string to research.

That researched immediately turned up more than enough results.

Cybertronians were not built in factories like the one it had been manufactured in.  They were molded, assembled, and sparked within much larger, much more private facilities.  They received special programming, and special secondary modes. They received origination codes.

This happened in the Core.

This was significantly more relevant to its interests, and so it sent out several new queries, parsing the information returned into categories that Senator Ratbat might find interesting.

Politically, there was a great deal of conflict about how to distribute the new Cybertronians who emerged from the great lifts out of the Core.  There was even information about the time before the great lifts—when bots had found their own ways to the surface of Cybertron, and much fewer had survived the trip.  The number of current arrivals, however, did not seem to be significantly more these days than they had been in old times...and a quick probe into yearly numbers confirmed the downward trend.

Young mechs were becoming rare, and many were being snatched up by the elite to keep as progeny…only to perish a few cycles after arriving in their new homes.

That was interesting, but also irrelevant.   

It did not explain how to gain access to information from within the Core—from within the one place likely to maintain records of all origination codes .

That information, it seemed, was only available within its dreams.

This frustrated the drone.

Dreams should not have been a viable source for anything.

If they were the only source it was to be given, however, then it had no choice.

It played back what was not already corrupted from the prior recharge cycle.

There was a flash of light.

Instantly it stopped the search, comparing that flash to the similar flash that had sparked when it had recalled the Node.  That had not been the only place that it had seen a flash with this spectrum.

One of Divide’s broken memory files had also contained a flash.

A Node flash.

A particular frequency of data-heavy light which only happened—

The memory cut, and it tried to resurrect the information a second time but couldn’t.  The file was too old, and had been played back too many times by its previous owner before the drone had copied it.

Only pieces of the content were still visible through the heavy filter of noise, leaving the drone to consider other alternatives to make it readable.

In its previous dissection of Divide’s memories, it had skimmed this particular one quickly, finding only one instance of a relevant song.  The majority of the file would be difficult to piece together, but if it could pinpoint the song that had been referenced it was likely that it could reconstruct the memory partially.

Only one song shared the timestamp.

It matched the song up with the file, calculated the noise algorithm, and filtered out what static it could.

Then, it let the memory play.

The space it found itself in was enormous.  

To a drone used to a control room and a docking closet, this new place was inconceivably vast:  a canyon with no top and no bottom, curving out of sight. No distant sunlight filtered down, and noises were instantly lost within its depths, creating a chasm with muted sight and sound.  It felt weightless, and realized that it was drifting in mid-air, floating pointedly towards a long spire that joined both canyon walls. Other spires lanced out across the distance, some like metal bridges—new and shiny—others like rock, old and organic and shimmering with a dark, rusty texture.

It—

He landed on the spire, his feet fastening to the surface comfortably with the audible hum of magnetics.  Perceptor was already waiting there, his internal lights softly glowing through the gaps of his armor. It wasn’t as thick as the other spark technician’s shielding—not yet—but Divide could already see where the forearms had been reinforced and both hands replaced.  “Do they still have you working on spark casings?” he asked, noticing the workman’s kit the other carried. “Because they’re wasting your talents if they are.”

Perceptor was still facing the direction that Divide had floated in from, staring at the grid of lights embedded in the massive wall.  Some were doors or windows—slotted into hexagons that formed makeshift living quarters from ancient tunnels that had collapsed. Other, darker blocks of shadows in-between them were tunnels still, leading off towards the distant surface of Cybertron.  “I think they’re keeping me there because I am making progress. Did you know they still were using tetrahide shielding to prevent induction on the localized circuitry? Psuedohide has been in existence for almost a century, now, and has vastly superior properties—with the added bonus of not having to mine for non-renewable ore.”

“And if I had any idea what that meant, I’d probably be giving you a promotion right now,” Divide grinned, passing the other by as he headed for the second wall.   Ahead, the hexagonal drop gate at the end of the spire remained closed, but he knew it wouldn’t stay that way for long. Other doors were opening and closing at seemingly random, shifting along the surface as if some invisible wind were blowing from within.  It was mesmerizing to watch when one wasn’t running late for work.

With significantly more effort than Divide had put into it, Perceptor managed to reorient himself correctly on the spire to follow.  “I would be willing to place a wager that you know more than you let on.”

“No, I don’t,” Divide replied, “and if I ever catch you telling the Drivers any such thing I promise I will disable your mag-boots.  I’m happy where I am.”

“You realize that disabling my mag-boots would be a demonstration of the very skills you’re professing not to have, don’t you?”

Divide remained silent for a few moments, waiting on the other’s slower stride.  “Disabling your mag-boots would at least get us to our drop on time.” Ahead, he could see tiny glimmers as other mechs fastened themselves onto the spire and approached the gate, raining down like comets in the dark.  

Obviously aware that he was being chided, the scientist made an effort to pick up his awkward steps.  “I’ll never get used to this.”

“You will,” he reassured, his optics not breaking from the gate, feeling the deafening silence around him and wanting to spread out, somehow, to fill it up.  “You just have to find the rhythm to it.”

As it was every day, he could not resist.

His lips parted, old programs activated, and Divide sang.  

A few of the distant mechs looked back, but it hardly stopped him from continuing, laying down a beat with his words that he let his feet follow…moving forward one step at a time to the accompanying thrum of magnetics.  A line of electricity raced along one of the distant spires, lift doors flicked open and closed, and lights twinkled from the hexagons as others joined them—marching solemnly along towards the only life that they had ever known.

“I recognize that song,” the teal-striped mech said.

“I know you do,” Divide replied, pausing in his singing as there was a flash ahead.  One of the drop-gates had descended, streaming pure white light out into the canyon before its hatch re-sealed. “That’s why I picked it.  I was hoping you would sing along.”

Although the other mech was still concentrating on his steps, he wasn’t distracted enough to prevent Divide from catching the flustered widening of his lenses.  “I’m afraid I can’t.”

“Is it too loud in here?” he laughed, listening to the sound vanish into the vast expanse of air.  “Or has it been too long since you’ve been to the opera?” It had been too long for Divide.

It always would be too long.

“It is not that,” Perceptor said, almost too quietly to hear, not looking up.  “I mean I can’t. I do not have the vocalizer for it.”

“Oh,” Divide said simply, his own panels smoothing down, feeling smaller for having not considered that.  

There was another flash, and another drop gate briefly showed the silhouettes of mechs, descending against a backdrop of blue-white circuitry into the ancient factory known as the Core.  He could hear the humming, even from here—the dense sound of pressure and current and gravity which made the Core so hazardous to work inside.

It hadn’t stopped him.

It hadn’t stopped any of them.

It was comfortable, here.  It was easy to forget the past, and hard to hold on to one’s worries with the way the walls themselves made music for him, and the way the caverns gave him stages on which he could perform.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said, watching Perceptor for any other signs of emotion as he released his foot clamps and dropped the final few feet onto their gate.

This time, there was no tell-tale emotion to see.

“Don’t be,” the other said, simply, and landed beside him.  Slowly, the thrum grew in pitch, and around the edges of the drop gate a crack of light appeared.  Their descent was beginning and he could feel Perceptor shifting closer, talking nervously as if that would make the trip easier.

It never did.

“I find it fascinating that there are manifest abilities which no spark technician could have planned.  It would be a worthwhile study, I think, to document what changes occur…singing. Or racing. Or genius.  Imagine if we learned how to anticipate a genius.”

The gate dropped beneath them, and a new hexagonal plate replaced it above them, swallowing them into a tunnel of circuitry and light.  Perceptor’s idea was cut short, and Divide could feel the other’s hands on his arm briefly as the scientist steadied himself.

Then, the tunnel broke, and there was only factory around them.  Great machines sped past, with countless walkways and lifts connecting them.  The lighting changed almost instantly to red—a deep, warm red of smelting pits and metal being coaxed into new shapes.  The tang in the air was nearly palpable…but not so much as the noise and the deep thrumming that poured renewed excitement into his spark.  He hadn’t given up everything, in coming here.

Not everything.

“We’d have pieces to a bigger puzzle, if we could.”  He nearly had to shout, to be heard over the sounds of the factory.  “You’d be good at documenting it, you know.”

“Perhaps,” the other agreed, watching downward for his quickly-approaching stop, “But it is not what I came here for.”  

It was not what Divide had come here for, either.  Not precisely. No one had ever bothered to find out what it was which made a mech able to sing the perfect song.

No one had been able to fix him, either, when it turned out he no longer could.

That was never something he had shared with Perceptor, however, and he did not expect the mech to give his secrets up in turn.  Not today, and not tomorrow.

Maybe someday, when they were ready, and when it still did not feel so close.  

As he said farewell to Perceptor at his stop, however, and made the final descent through the factory floor and down, lower, and lower, and lower, into one of the central Nodes, he did not stop thinking about what the mech had said. The technicians already knew how to read a spark to tell them what a mech would be good at and what his temperament would be.  How difficult could it be to collect data on that, to see more?

How hard could it be, to learn what sparks were coming next?

The drop gate vanished into darkness.

The Node flashed.

“Communications Drone.”

Not expecting to be hearing its designation from the monitor, the drone startled back into reality with a jerk that almost pulled its connection jack from the socket.  The memory had been much longer this time, and much more detailed.

It was still trying to assess what it saw, and was still half-convinced that it was somewhere very dark and very enclosed, underneath the pounding noises of a factory.

That could not stop its protocols from kicking in, however, forcing it to pay attention to any mech with that particular voice pattern.

Tilting its helm, it addressed Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, Third Nexus Council.

“I am growing impatient for the information that you obtained from Divide.  Do you have an estimate on when that report will be ready?”

It did not.  With the new information that was racing through its processors, all time-tables were in need of re-assessment.  The song Divide had been singing in the memory was still playing over and over again in its mind, and only now were the drone’s sensors confirming that it was, in fact, still located in the tower.

It shook its head.

The finials on both sides of Ratbat’s faceplates swept back, and a definite frown appeared.  Aware of what both expressions meant, it noted the disapproval and assessed its chances of a memory wipe.  They were not high yet , which gave it the opening it needed to place a request for increased bandwidth allowance.  

It was on the right track, now.  All it needed was the power to go the rest of the way, and obtain the origination codes.

“I am departing tonight for a small gathering in Altihex.  Afterward, depending on the status of my vote, I may be adjourning to Vos to celebrate my victory.”  The senator paused, as if expecting a reply.

It was incapable of giving one, and so it continued to stare.

After a moment, Ratbat continued, his frown deepening.  “I expect results before I return. Otherwise, there will be consequences.”

That at least it could respond to.  Nodding once, it increased the priority on the project, waiting to see if its request would be confirmed.  

The monitor cut out.

A small beep sounded to indicate that he’d been granted the additional processing power.

That was all it needed.

The memory had been long, and it had been confusing, but it had given the drone what it had sought.

Just before cutting out, it had watched Divide input his authorization into the access point of the central Node.  It could find that Node again. It could find every Origination Code it wanted.

It could find everything.

Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, Third Nexus Council, was going to be pleased.

Chapter Text

There were two solar cycles to go before his arena match with Titan.

It made Megatronus restless, jittery, and all-too-eager to feel the sand under his treads and the contact of metal-on-metal, jarring him into the keen awareness of his own fragility.  It had been too long since he had felt the thrill of danger or the fine line between life and death, both of which had ever renewed his drive to prove the value of the underclass. Working in the factory might have dulled the edges of those memories, but it hadn’t drowned them out.

Nothing could.

A million stellar cycles from now he’d still be watching strangers and waiting for them to attack, preparing for the quickest way out or looking for their weaknesses.  Always, the arena would be part of him…as he needed it to be.

It had only been Perceptor he’d grown comfortable around outside of the Underground.  He did not know how he felt about that, knowing that eventually his relationship with the scientist would have to be manipulated to further his goals.  He was going to have to use their comfort to get close.

He would use anything to get the oscilloscope.

Nevertheless, the thought of betraying a friend—even one of the upper class—did not set well with him.

He’d been relentlessly observing the spark technician for the last four cycles, working hard to find an opening where he could take the oscilloscope unseen or gain some clue to what its readings were without endangering the scientist.  

Perceptor did not make this easy, though.  Although he had been using the device more and more while they experimented on the drone, it rarely left his side.  As frequently as he brought it out, he was just as frequently picking it up, keeping contact with it to confirm spark changes and adjust the new drone programming.  It was never set down long enough for Megatronus to get close.

With his upcoming match prompting his sense of urgency, this frustrated Megatronus to no end.  Unless Perceptor provided an option soon, wittingly or not, the gladiator would be forced to consider alternative methods…and there were not many peaceable options left.  In a moment of desperation, he’d even asked the scientist as casually as possible if he could test their sentience shell program on a small group of drones. It was quick thinking on his part, but it would have given him a way out—a chance to make a finished, calibrated processor chip with Perceptor using the oscilloscope instead of him stealing it.

Amazingly, Perceptor had relented.

Less amazingly, he’d set the stipulation that they needed to get the programming precise on their experimental drone, first.  

Megatronus knew that wouldn’t happen in time for his match.

If he did not get either a finished chip or the oscilloscope before he had his armor reverted for the fight, he was not going to have another chance.  He couldn’t afford to constantly be swapping his appearance back and forth. The cost and timing were prohibitive, and that was if Perceptor didn’t notice the signs of the operation when he came back in.

His entire plan was hinging on him having a solution now.

He didn’t.

He hadn’t had a concrete plan since he’d walked into the factory lunar cycles ago, hoping to find some way to sabotage the production line and get out intact.  At the time, he’d only been able to consider destruction, looking to obliterate enough of the factory that it would be a while before it got back on its wheels again.

After meeting Perceptor, he’d found there was a better way—a way to keep the drones offline permanently.  

If he could change the drones and change the way the public looked at the drones, then the damage to the industry would be absolute.  It would be lasting. He wouldn’t have to worry about his livelihood anymore, nor would thousands of other workers.

Everything hinged on him getting the oscilloscope, making the final changes to the processors, and getting those new processors to Altihex.

If this meant he would need to take a more confrontational approach with Perceptor, then would need to do it soon.  He’d need to do it quickly, and he’d need to do it quietly, and he’d need to do it permanently so that the technician could not tell anyone where he lived or point out that the oscilloscope was missing.  

That made everything tricky.  

He didn’t like ‘tricky.’

Killing a scientist was different, somehow.  It was not like killing in the arena, where a mech knew the dangers going in.  Every individual who stood on the arena grounds knew it was only a matter of numbers until he stood on it for the last time.

Perceptor didn’t know that.  Perceptor did not look at his job as life-threatening, and he did not fear for his spark each cycle he came in.  He was frustratingly naïve and frustratingly obtuse and frustratingly friendly, but he did not deserve the end that Megatronus was considering.

He did not deserve it, but he was running out of time.

To give himself a break to think, Megatronus had not gone into work that morning.

He hadn’t been able to bring himself to, with his sensors frazzled and with the match so close.  It was getting harder and harder to face Perceptor, and harder yet to think of a plan with the technician nearby.  

Besides, there was still one small chance that he could meet his goal a different way.

He found himself there, now, looking up at the towering walls of Kaon’s Arena.

Today it was drenched in mist, grey-colored from the dirty streets and cloying with moisture that was trying and failing to fall out of the distant sky.  It was rare to see it raining in the underbelly of Kaon, but one could hardly call the oily drips that splattered off the overpasses anything approximating rain.  They weren’t clean enough to show even the memory of water, and they weren’t thick enough or numerous enough to scrub the grime out from the gutters, soggy with grease and crammed with thin, crumpled pamphlets that had come un-magnetized from the outer arena walls.  

He could see the old headers etched onto the surface, their ink running off of the thin aluminum where it used to say ‘Free-for-all Weekends—two cubes of energon for every round you’re still alive!’  It still showed a figure that looked very much like he did, surrounded by a group of menacing monsters ready to attack. The shapes were too vague to place, but he remembered Free-for-all Weekends well enough to picture the dirty creatures they brought in, half-starved aliens poked and prodded and enraged to the limits of their chains, eager to tear anything that looked Cybertronian apart.  

Now, there was a new poster was plastered in its place:  Megatronus vs. Titan, the battle of two giants.

Curious to see himself the smaller of the two silhouettes for once, he reached up, tracing the outline of the hover-engines that he’d used to have, recalling the powerful purr they made when warming up, a deep magnetic thrum that lent excitement to both him and the audience.

Soon.

Soon, he would have that again, and everything could go back to normal…or as normal as it could be to make a living out of tearing other mechs apart.  

That had seemed normal, for a while.

His hand dropped back to his side and he left the posters behind, moving towards the back gate where prospective fighters entered.  The fence was bolted shut but not guarded, and he knew the combination to the lock so long as no one had changed it since last time.  Clench would have mentioned that, he was sure.

The old warrior hadn’t though, and so Megatronus slipped inside the restricted area without trouble, crossing through the long, twisting alleyway that slammed up against an old, unused canning plant.  He could still see the paint flaking off of fading advertisements, emblazoned in colors that must have been bright before the place began to rust.

“Hey.  Hey you!  You can’t come back there,” he heard shouted behind him, and turned to see a tall, bright-green builder that was only a size class smaller than himself.  “This is a restricted part of the arena, so if you don’t scram by the time I count to three…”

The words trailed off, as recognition dawned on the mech’s face.

“Scrapper,” Megatronus said, naming the familiar mech while waiting for him to catch up.

“It’s you,” the scavenger replied, and scratched his head.  “I didn’t recognize you, looking like that.”

“That is the point of a disguise,”  Megatronus countered, amused that the old treads Hook had grafted on to help him look like a common laborer had confused even Scrapper for a moment.

“Eh, maybe.  But any engineer worth his weight in solid gold conductive wiring could have guessed you were a miner before you made it big, you know.  Miners always last the longest in the ring, and they have a way of favoring a hands-on approach. It’s very earthy. When’s your appointment with Hook?”  Changing topics abruptly, Scrapper crossed his arms.

“I haven’t made one yet.”

“Why not?  He’ll need at least a day to get you looking respectable again, especially if you want any upgrades done.”

“If I give him less time, he‘ll just take it as a challenge.”  Megatronus smirked, thinking about the arrogant laborer who headed the small team of caretakers on the arena grounds.  Hook had talents, and Hook liked showing off his talents...which suited Megatronus fine. His touch was light, and his fingers could handle delicate and precise manipulations with ease, making him uniquely suited towards doing both repairs and upgrades—a rare combination to find down in the Underground.  Megatronus had long suspected that if it weren’t for the fact his hands were too big to repair most mechs, he’d have been a primary-rank technician enjoying the lights of the upper zones.  

Hook, he was sure, suspected that too.

“Has he still got my old parts?”  

“Most of ‘em,” Scrapper replied with a shrug.  “Some of them were damaged, others we had to sell when the Sponsors came sniffing around.  Frenzy has been here almost every day looking for better ones, though, and I think you’ll be happy with what he’s found.  I took the liberty of coming up with new designs for them. You’ll have to talk to Hook before I tell you about them though, or he’ll grind me a new exhaust hole.”

Megatronus frowned, ignoring what would have otherwise been his favorite topic to focus on the part that concerned him the most.  “The Sponsors aren’t still here, are they?”

“No.  An agent from Speed Co. left only about a half-cycle before you came in, but there is no one back in the Heap now.  Are there any parts you’re looking for in particular?”

“Yes,” Megatronus replied, but did not specify.

Scrapper did not seem put-off by the pause, however, even if there was a moment of awkward silence between them while the caretaker waited to see if anything more would be said.  

“Well, okay then,” the builder replied, eventually.  “Stop in the back garage before you leave to say hello to Hook.  I’ll have the designs laid out for you by then.”

Megatronus nodded, simply.  “Sound the call if anyone else shows up.  I don’t want to be caught off-guard out there.”

“Protocol hasn’t changed since you came here last.  We’ve got your soon-to-be-much-more-beautiful back.”  With a wave and a smile, Scrapper turned back through the mists to head towards the arena.  “See you in a few.”

The light coming from the arena garage looked warm, and dry, and inviting, and Megatronus strongly considered following Scrapper out of the damp darkness of the alleyway to speak with him and Hook about the upcoming fight.  

It would have been more pleasant than what he was otherwise about to do.

There was no time, however.  Not if he wanted to look at the Heap without any other Sponsors showing up.

Hook and Scrapper both would still be around when he was finished, and with luck he’d be able to schedule his reverse surgery and look at whatever upgrades Scrapper had designed before he had to rest up and get back to the factory.  

He would get to be himself again soon, but better.

He missed talking with the pair of them, besides.  They’d been invaluable in assisting Megatronus’s rise in the arena, which was a debt he also regrettably owed to Clench.  However, even if his old team leader had been the one to get the construction crew their job as arena caretakers, it was Megatronus who had made them comfortably rich. Whatever idiot spark technicians had given Scrapper and Hook the pronouncement of being manual laborers for their lives had done the Underground a great favor by absolutely underestimating the talent of both.  Then again, if he hadn’t been a large enough frame-type for Hook’s big hands to operate on, he might have never known it, himself.

It had worked out either way, and if any debts were owed then his work with the drone factory was his chance to repay them.

All he needed was an oscilloscope.

Following the pathway down along the great arena wall, he found himself watching his steps more closely the further from the garages he walked.  It was a bit of a squeeze through here as the old canning factory ran against the back wall of the gladiatorial stands, but it was the only access point still left.  As the wall curved, the pathway darkened, large chunks of rubble and gloom providing the illusion of a dead end to passerby. His running lights did not pierce far into the mist, hindering him when he looked upward as they bounced off of the moisture instead. This was hardly as dark as the Underground could get--especially to a mech used to the pitch-black of the mines.  However, the mines weren’t usually so moist.

His treads slipped, squeaking over the dank refuse that rusted and calcified across the alley floor.  He steadied himself on the wall, sought out the growing light coming from the other end, and continued.  

Behind the arena, lay the Heap.  

It was precisely as he remembered it, wide swaths of conglomerate junk opening in front of him, peeking out of the mists like crumbling grave markers on a blackened hill.  Here was a testament to the best and worst the Underground had to offer: a sickening but impressive display of abandoned limbs, malfunctioning transmissions, and rims that were long out of style.

Carved into the shells of old buildings in what once was a manufacturing district, the Heap represented the collected remnants of a thousand death matches.  Here, a mech could find nearly any part or circuit if they searched for it long enough, as Megatronus himself had done when he’d needed processors to take back to the factory.  It was dirty work, but useful.

Most of the streets that had once passed through the area were now blocked, sealed by Hook and Scrapper and their friends with carefully placed walls and piles of rubble.  

No one had protested as the district had surreptitiously been requisitioned and sectioned off.  It had been so long since there’d been valuable real-estate here that it was easier to let the arena handle it.  If someone, somewhere, had deeds to any of these abandoned manufacturing plants, they were long dead.

The Heap had become an attraction in and of itself since then.  Hook’s team had expanded the eclectic wares by making a deal with the local Enforcers, and with the addition of the skivs and empties that were picked up on patrol, Kaon’s Heap had become the Heap.  For a price, the caretakers would let anyone in.  By the hour, they’d let you peruse the wares, and you could take away anything that you could carry.  The hardiest parts they stripped themselves, and sold to the Sponsor Agents who came through looking for quick and easy upgrades.  The most attractive parts went to a different clientele.  

Megatronus, however, didn’t have to pay the browsers fee.  

He didn’t need to.  He’d been a part of the business from its inception.  He’d given the caretakers ideas, and he’d given them contacts, and he’d given them, when he could, a little bit of capital.  They’d done the rest on their own.

Clench had always told him that it paid to keep the arena employees cheering for you, and he’d learned that the old fool knew what he was talking about.  The construction crew had never steered him wrong. Without their help, there were times he never would have gotten the repairs or upgrades that he’d needed. Without them, he’d probably still be with a Sponsor.

That thought terrified him, even now.

Reaching out for what looked to be an humanoid arm, he prevented his intakes from sucking in.  The Heap reeked of half-processed energon, stale oil, and souring lubricants, made all the worse by the mist that clung to the air.  Dislodging the arm from its broken socket didn’t help with the smell and he frowned as he stepped back, looking at the shield device that was installed close to the wrist.  It was boxy and familiarly shaped and potentially valuable, but it was not what he was looking for.

Frowning, he tossed it back.

“What are yous, daft?” a small voice said behind him, and Megatronus registered the sound of parts being shoved out of the way as somebody approached.  “Dat’s worth at least a hundred shanix…”

“Is it now.”  Turning to watch the tiny mech making his way through a pile of broken spark plugs, Megatronus felt the edges of his mouth twitch into a smirk.  “Then by all means, you’re free to take it.”

Making a face, Frenzy shook his head.  “I can’t use it, and it ain’t compatible wit yous.  I’m sayin’ yous is daft to leave it cause we can sell it. ”  

“And I’m saying that if you want the money from it, you should carry it . ”  Megatronus gestured to the valuable part, hiding his mirth as best he could.  

Frenzy stared at the arm, weighing it and then looking down at himself, obviously aware of the fact that it was easily half again his size.  Then, shrugging, he headed for it, grabbing a dull axe that was lying nearby. With a strength that always surprised arena patrons, the tiny mech hefted the gigantic weapon, and cut the top of the arm off at the joint in one heavy slice.

“If I’m carryin’ it, den I’m keepin’ the shanix.”  Tossing the axe, Frenzy lifted the now much smaller half-arm up onto his shoulder, and looked at it.  “Somebody’ll probably want dis hand, too. Yous got any idea how hard it is, finding’ good hands?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever had that problem, no.”  The smirk had edged its way back onto his face, especially as he was staring at one of his ‘good hands’ right now.  Rumble and Frenzy both had earned their keep. “Are you still out here looking for parts for me?”

“Every day,” Frenzy sniffed, rubbing his free hand across his nose as if it would do something about the smell.  “It keeps up dat guise. You know, the one about yous needin’ major repairs? And if it’s bringin’ me a little extra unleaded on the side, well, I ain’t complainin’ about dat.  Scrapper gives me a good price for gear, an’ then sells it on for even more. It’s business.   Not dat you’d know anything ‘bout business, with yous havin’ a job.”

“I told Perceptor I would not be coming in, today,” Megatronus frowned, uncertain what separated having a job from business.

“Is he dat technician?”  Already moving onward towards the next pile, Frenzy did not seem burdened by either his load or Megatronus’s frown.  Having no reason not to, the gladiator followed.

“Clench told you about him, did he?”  

Picking up a head and looking it over, Frenzy scoffed and tossed it back into the junk.  “Somethin’ like dat.”

Sensing there was something more to the conversation, Megatronus didn’t let it drop.  “What did he tell you?”

“Nuttin, boss.”  Frenzy grabbed a lump of something, paying it significantly more attention than it was due, not looking back at him.

When Megatronus let his engine rev , however, a resounding wordless threat that echoed off of the abandoned walls around them, Frenzy dropped the part that he was looking at and clutched tighter onto the arm he was still carrying.  

“What did he tell you?”  Megatronus asked again, with an edge to his voice.  

“Now dats how ta ask a question!”  With a shiver, Frenzy jumped off of a mound of transformation cogs, and tossed one up to him to catch.  “He said yous was hanging with this gilded data-hoarder up in the top zones, and dat yous was thinkin’ of equations all the time an’ forgettin’ how ta fight.  Bein’ all polite and edumacated, he said.”  Kicking a piece of rubble, Frenzy’s face squished up to indicate exactly what he thought of politeness and education.  “Den, I find yous here in the Heap, askin’ questions all nicely and talkin’ to Scrapper and poking around, instead of trainin’ for your match.  A fight wit’ Titan. ”

Megatronus looked at the transformation cog he had been tossed, feeling along the edges where it had been cracked and thinking on just how dangerous his upcoming fight would be.  

“I just don’t wanna have been wastin’ all dis time and collectin’ all these parts if yous is gonna die--”

“Enough.”   Megatronus interjected, and crushed the cog within his hand.  

Finally startled into silence, Frenzy dropped the arm that he was carrying and stared.

“I have a plan,” he growled, “that is larger than one single fight.  I have two days left to carry this out before my window of opportunity is gone, at which point it won’t matter if I win or lose.  If I fail, here , then we all die, regardless.”

“If it’s dat important, boss,” Frenzy managed to ask, tentatively.  “Then what’re yous doin in a junk yard?”

“I’m looking,” he said, with a weight he hadn’t expected to be shouldering, “For an oscilloscope.”  

Frenzy stared more openly this time, slowly picking the arm back up without taking his optics off of Megatronus.  “See, now I know dat Clench was right,” he said, still careful, but with the same sort of daring attitude that he and his brother had gotten famous for.  His stare continued for a few moments, though, and when Megatronus did not seem eager to punt him across the Heap he slowly tilted his head.  “What’s it look like?”

Surprised that Frenzy was taking an interest, Megatronus brushed off the dust from the crushed t-cog and reached out towards the smaller bot.

Wary, Frenzy took a step back, but at a single growl from Megatronus he held still, and Megatronus tapped the boxy shape of the shield generator he was carrying.  “It’s similar to this. Perceptor attaches it to his wrist, and uses it to read spark frequencies.”

With a long, low whistling sound, Frenzy glanced to the shield generator, and then back to Megatronus with a glint in his optics.  “Dat’s some super illegal barter.  I ain’t ever heard of a mod like dat, but I bet yous could do some serious damage wit’ it.”

“It’s illegal, yes, but it’s hardly damaging.”  Megatronus snorted, once, a sound close to derision that had the extra effect of clearing the moisture from his intakes.  “All it can do is get a reading.”

“Dats all it has ta do,” Frenzy shrugged, toeing a knee joint out of the way to look beneath it.  “I could probably take care ‘a the rest.”

Reaching into a pile of still-whole mechs, Megatronus shuffled them aside and frowned, watching each of their wrists for boxy shapes as the group cascaded toward the ground.  “I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

“Look, it’s simple.”  Hopping off his own pile to come see what Megatronus had unearthed, Frenzy set the arm down off to the side.  “I was a miner, same as yous. I got the name ‘Frenzy’ because I was built equipped with sonic disruptors. Hit the right frequency, and boom --I can shatter rocks.”  He stood, balanced, on the shoulder of someone that was missing a head, a bot that Megatronus could recognize as a past opponent despite the layer of dirt that covered him.  “All I’m sayin’ is, if I can make rocks break by hittin the right notes…just imagine what knowing the right notes of a spark could do.”

Looking at the dead mech before him, torso caved in where a heavy punch had smashed his armor and dislodged his spark casing, it was all too easy to imagine.

There was a reason why only the spark technicians were allowed to read sparks.  If a processor could only be programmed by knowing the frequencies that made up a spark, then knowing a spark’s signature was dangerous.  Having the power to disrupt that signature, as well?

Megatronus didn’t know, but he could imagine.  

He could imagine why Perceptor guarded his oscilloscope so fiercely, which meant his searching here was useless.  

He’d have to get something that valuable from Perceptor, himself.

“Alright, Frenzy.  I see what you’re saying,” he murmured, turning back toward the alley, leaning down to pick up the arm that Frenzy had been carrying.  “You know what you’re looking for, so I’m going to take this back to Scrapper and go.” When the small mech opened his mouth to protest, Megatron raised a hand to silence him. “I’ll make certain he knows it is from you, and that you’ll get the credit for it.”

“Good,” the little miner answered, both hands on his hip joints.  “But I don’t get it. I thought yous was takin’ the day off?”

“I am,” Megatronus replied, with a smirk over his shoulder.  “I’m going to practice. ”

Chapter Text

When the drop gate sped past Perceptor’s usual stop without letting him off, Divide was stunned enough that he stopped humming his favorite tune.  

Something like this had never happened before.  

Wondering if they’d gotten on the wrong inner-Core lift, he ventured to the side of the gate and peered downward at the rocky texture of the factory floor as it rushed towards them, confirming that all of the usual landmarks were in place.  Nothing immediately seemed amiss. The smelting machines were still on the left, the stamping machines on the right, and a small, dark hole to the sub-levels was directly beneath them, just big enough for the platform they were on to slip through.  

The teal-striped scientist looked over at him, standing awkwardly by the edge of the drop gate as if ready to step off of it, clearly puzzled as to how he’d lost the opportunity to do so.

Divide shrugged, having no answer for him.  They were definitely on the right course, it was just a course he’d always taken alone after Perceptor had gotten off.

Their drop gate had never missed a stop before.  Every day the two of them had been on the same schedule, coming in at the same time as the other technicians to catch the drop window into the ancient factory.  Every day, Perceptor and he had shared the same lift, reporting for duties that they weren’t supposed to talk about, wondering why a platform that looked as if it were built for 20 only ever held the two of them.  Every day, the drop gate had paused in its descent to let Perceptor off into the same catwalk, just outside a thickly shielded room, vanishing into what Divide had worked out must be the casing construction and research wing.  

Every day, it was the same.

The factory ran like clockwork, because the Drivers kept it that way.

Now, something was going wrong.

Reaching out, the teal-striped scientist touched him on the arm, concerned, and spoke something that came out as static.

Wanting to re-assure his friend, he replied in a voice that was equally as filled with static.  The basement was approaching quickly, the edges of the darkness fuzzy and unresolved, spreading quickly into black noise and static.

The entire factory was static.

Then, it was gone.

Aggravated with the low quality of the memory fragment, the communications drone paused the playback so it could try to fix the file.  Most of it was barely decipherable, both image and sound lost in bursts of interference that were either due to the memory’s age, hardware degradation, or the low sampling rate it’d needed to use when it’d first made the copy.  Without Divide’s humming, it had no familiar data to compare, leaving it with no way to put the jumbled pieces together in a way that made sense. All it could do now was push the memory forward, skipping Perceptor’s confused conversation with Divide and the sudden drop into the factory basement.  

It reeled, then.  At double speed through a foreign memory, the darkness and motion that Divide had experienced were disorienting, bombarding the drone with sensory captures that were still present even in the file’s degraded state.  The entire notion of drop gates moving through strange gravity fields already made the drone uneasy, but it was worse in pitch-black without a visual reference point. It had not been equipped with programming to handle a situation like this.

Thankfully, this was not its first trip through this memory.

It had seen this part before, and could endure just long enough to get to what it needed.

The drop gate halted jarringly and veered sideways.  Both occupants crashed into each other, Divide already expecting the sudden momentum change but Perceptor caught completely off guard.  There was a quick, hushed exchange about the intensity of the magnetic fields this close into the Core and the lack of proper shielding.  Worry colored Perceptor’s voice, and even Divide’s normal assurances were overlaid with a twinge of apprehension. No one was supposed to enter the Node with him.

However, there didn’t seem to be much choice.

The drone allowed the memory to resume at normal speed, and felt Divide’s hand reaching out to steady Perceptor as he anticipated the drop gate’s final stop.  It had never gotten used to having hands, even in a memory.

Thankfully, the hands knew what to do.

Divide was standing quietly on the gate as it slowed, waiting.  It was still pitch black in the factory’s sub-levels, his optics and Perceptor’s providing almost no illumination against the gargantuan void.  While the air pressure and sensor echoes had first given him the impression of flying through the basement’s wide tunnels, the atmosphere within the Node was not the same.

The Node was open and still, and his sensors were filled with more ghosts than echoes.  

“I’m here,” Divide spoke into the nothingness, keeping one hand on Perceptor’s arm.

Responding to his voice, the ghosts stirred.

They shifted with the room, errant pieces of data that felt real but were not, fabrications caused by strange fluctuations and massive currents hidden just behind the walls of the Node.  He heard Perceptor gasp beside him, saw his optics tracking the near-tangible magnetic fields, and tightened his grip to make sure the scientist stayed on the lift while they were being scanned.  The worst thing that could happen would be for Perceptor to fall off the drop gate before the Node was ready.

If he did, well…

Divide was not actually sure what the Node would do, but he didn’t want to find out.

“Is everything going to be alright?” the scientist asked.

“I hope so,” Divide replied, and waited, one hand on Perceptor and the other clenched in a tight fist over his own torso.

This had to work.

It had to.

The drop gate released them, leaving them floating as it fell away beneath.

Whatever was going to happen now—for good or ill—they were going through with it together.  

The ghosts stilled.

Then, the Node flashed.

Outside of the memory, the communications drone winced.

Inside of the memory, the blinding brilliance hurt even Divide’s optics, which could never adjust fast enough no matter how many times he went through this.  The light was too bright for him—much too intense—filled with images and noises and sensor readings that clashed with his own perception, leaving him feeling as if he’d been rushed through the whole of Cybertron in a matter of nanoclicks.

That was not entirely inaccurate.

The light was data, and the data was Cybertron.  

The data was unfortunately also interference.  The communications drone could not even begin to count the number of different signals overlaid in Divide’s memory at this point, one stopping and a new one starting before a reading could be made.  For an instant, it saw a small, dirty room with an iron doorway, three mechs crowded on one tiny bench while a fourth banged on metal bars and shouted. Then it was on a street, traffic rushing by as buildings towered ahead.  That image vanished, too, replaced by one of a giant mech standing in silver sand, blue optics flashing with fear as he gripped a sword in his hand and managed at the last moment to jab it through his opponent.

As the initial Node flash faded in the memory fragment, the images became less frequent and less crisp, each muddling into a background static that permeated the rest of the file.  From here on, it became more and more difficult to keep focus on Divide and Perceptor.

However, it was a communications drone.

The difficulty of the task was irrelevant.

Sadly, it was unable to recover most of Perceptor’s excited exclamations.  The scientist appeared to be theorizing at great lengths about the Node, clearly surprised to find himself in one.  Aside from brief snips of clear data, however, there was not much to reconstruct. “A network—a precursor to today’s network…“  “…before the second Great War…“ “Archeologists have only found…”

Divide himself was distracted by the images still coming from the Node, leaving Perceptor’s remarks even further undecipherable.  There were bursts of white noise that appeared to have a pattern, directed specifically to Divide and not seeming to affect the rambling scientist at all.  The communications drone did not recognize the exact signals through the intermittent feedback, but it did recognize the style of communication.

The Node was opening up a dialog with Divide.

Somehow.

Suspended in the center of the Node as they were, the communications drone could easily rule out a physical connection.  This meant that a wireless connection was more likely, but while Divide was transmitting data to the Node, the Node was not streaming it back.

Not via normal signals.

“Divide, is this hub optical?” Perceptor asked, coming to the same conclusion that the communications drone was making megacycles later.  

In the memory Divide could only nod, still struggling to maintain two fields of vision at once—that of his own, and that of the Cybertronian Network—while the Node waited for full synchronization.

“And are you linked to it somehow?”

He managed another nod.

“But why?  I can understand the appeal of accessing a network this ancient, but I can’t see how it relates to our work in the factory.”

“Perceptor, we aren’t supposed to discuss—“

“It is obvious that this Node is close to the Core, which explains how it is still active when the ones the archeologists found were not.  However, there’s no point of using it for what it was meant for—as a network—without other Nodes to communicate with.  There would have to be some other reason to keep a Node serviced and viable…which means there must be something that it can gain access to.  Old databases that still exist, perhaps. That would be the most sensible, because if no one else knew how to access those databases, then we could essentially secure vast amounts of information without worry.  In other words… a Node would be more useful as a storage facility for sensitive information than it would be as a transfer point…wouldn’t it?”

“Perceptor.”

The scientist was looking away from him, now, examining one of the smooth walls of the Node while he worked out everything that Divide was supposed to keep secret.

“And if we are referring to sensitive information, the Core factory would have one thing in particular that it would need to store, and that it would need to store in great volumes.”

“Perceptor?”

The scientist was staring straight at him, now, optics shuttered into slits against the brilliant light of the Node but still a bright crystal-blue.  “You monitor spark frequencies, don’t you? You’re an Authenticator.”

“ Perceptor.”  Divide pleaded--

Before there was a burst of white noise, and the communications drone struggled to compensate.  The memory at this part was almost entirely corrupted while Divide made his final connection with the Node, leaving a confusing mish-mash of broken and seemingly unrelated fragments.  It could piece together enough to keep the memory going, but not enough to recover the data through the wash of unusual emotions. There was something in the title which caused Divide pain.  Pain, and anger, frustration, pride…and fear.

However, the communications drone was not concerned with what Divide feared.  It was getting close to the data that it needed, regardless of the clarity in this section.  The conversation between the two spark technicians was not the important part.

Because of that, it had no issue fast-forwarding past them, skipping through the emotions, the noise, and the static.  Perceptor’s image jumped as his position changed, moving away from Divide. The image flickered once, and then again, overlaid with cells of darkness that must have been what Divide was seeing in the Node.  With the Node connection complete the entire memory was stilted, broken but still playing back the pieces that came from Divide’s own vision.

This was far from perfection.  Every movement in the memory flashed for only an instant and then was taken away, each sound cut into almost equal divisions.  It was going to have extreme difficulty interpreting what happened from here…

But it would do it.

It needed what was coming up next.

Perceptor and Divide were arguing.  Through the flickers, it could read the emotions on the face of the teal-striped scientist as it had been programmed recently to do.  The mech was excited, his gestures grand and often pointing to the Node. Given that there was no front or back to the sphere, he often pointed to completely different places, but the intent was clear.

“… We might be able to separate the signals.  We could even learn better what sorts of fields negatively affect the spark, and how to combat them!”

Divide’s point was much more difficult to interpret.  As the memory was from his point of view, there was never an opportunity to see him and he spoke much less than Perceptor did.  His words were soft and uncertain, and there weren’t enough of them to reconstruct. However, between the flickers and the static his thoughts still remained.

He was resolved.  He was beaten. He couldn’t easily believe that the scientist would figure out how to separate the signals in a spark, or that the scientist should even be asking about something as sensitive as sparks, or that the Drivers would let him keep the data if he gained it.  He wouldn’t get excited about the possibility that manipulating sparks might fix his own issues. Not this time.

But he still had hope.

Little by little, what Perceptor argued for was getting through to him.  Little by little, despite the corruption in the file, they were getting closer to what the Communications Drone was looking for.

Little by little, Divide relented.

If Perceptor wanted access to information on sparks, then it was possible that such information could help somebody.  It was worth it to try.

He transmitted his identification to the Node receptors to access the Signature database—

—And only static was returned.

However, the communications drone ignored the static this time.

It had gotten what it needed.

The identification that Divide transmitted was exactly the same as it had been the first time the drone had played the memory, down to the digits that were barely decipherable at the end.  Although it had not expected the number to change, this second playback had been determined necessary to confirm that it had copied the sequence correctly the first time. It needed the code to be precise before it could proceed.  

It performed a quick sum-check against the encoding bits to confirm that the fuzzy signals were what it had previously calculated, and then compared the results.

It was a match.

Both copies were correct.

This number was Divide’s technician ID.

It would have been the same ID he would have sent to the Node for every system request.  In this particular case, it was useful because the system request that Divide had made in the memory was the exact system request that the drone needed to make now.  With Divide’s technician ID obtained from the memory, and with Divide’s Origination Code obtained from when the drone had interfaced with him, it could effectively fake a transmission that would seem like it had come from Divide.  All it needed to do now was splice the two together and remove its own Origination code from the string.

That would not be easy.  Forgery was a familiar and often-practiced skill, but there was difficulty inherent with any manipulation of spark codes.  They were meant to be impossible to duplicate authentically.

However, it had very little choice.  

It had found the Node, and the Node was waiting for it.

It was going to gain access to the Signature database.

Locating the address for Divide’s particular Node had taken it an entire work cycle.  Although the memory seemed to indicate that Nodes had connections to many points on Cybertron, the drone had realized early in its search that those connections did not go through any established transmission towers.  Just as Perceptor had theorized, there weren’t any Nodes to be found on the Cybertronian Network. It had needed to patch through very small, very ancient servers just to locate a shared system at all.

When it finally had located a connection point, it had taken several cycles to understand how to interpret the information that was passing through.  The Node did not follow the same protocols for moving data from place to place as the Cybertronian Network did, making it extremely difficult to even recognize how to communicate.  Nothing that the Node transmitted or received was familiar. It was like listening to an alien language for the first time, but without a translation program or common samples to analyze.

Most of what the drone used for reference was taken from Divide’s memory.

However, it was lacking most of Divide’s memories.  It had not downloaded anything that did not relate to music or that did not contain any of a limited string of items on Ratbat Holding’s Interest list.  Without the right information, the Node would not cooperate with a foreign entity.  

With Divide’s origination code and access sequence, however, it had a chance.

It had one chance.

It constructed the data packet in accordance with what it could understand of the Node’s protocols, appended Divide’s origination code by altering certain digits within its own, and forwarded it.

Then, it waited for a reply.

It did not do anything while waiting.

It could not.

Every bit of its processing power was devoted to the task of finishing Divide’s database.  Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, Third Nexus Council, had submitted a demand for its reports enough times that the priority was resting at 99.9%, leaving 0.1% for minimal maintenance.  Its attention was completely focused, and it was focused on one thing.

If it could get through to the Node, then it could access the necessary Origination Codes.  If it could access the Origination Codes, then it could determine the significance of the sequence Divide had placed the songs in.  If it could determine the significance of the sequence, then it would understand what Divide had been doing.

If it understood what Divide had been doing, then it would understand why its own songs were in the list.

It would understand why it had created songs to begin with.

It would understand, and it could finally forward that information to the tower’s analysts.

It would complete its task.

Even the likelihood of a memory wipe could not deter it from its duty--not when the priority was at 99.9%.

This was what it had been constructed for.

If it could not decode the purpose of a musician’s database, then it was of no use to Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, Third Nexus Council.

Being of no use was significantly worse than being of use and enduring a mere memory wipe.

Wasn’t it?

It was.

It was, but that did not stop the drone from shuddering when it considered its upcoming memory loss.  A loss of memory was a loss of efficiency, and a loss of efficiency impacted everything that it was designed to do.  It still did not understand how it had been more efficient before its memory wipe, but that was mattering less and less.  It was catching up.

It did not want to lose these experiences because of that.

It was…proud…of them.  

There were several entries in Divide’s database that it had placed there, and that was satisfying.  Locating pieces of music in difficult to reach places was satisfying.  Solving each complicated algorithm that would have prevented it from gathering information was satisfying.

Learning how to find a Node was satisfying, too.

No other drone had accomplished that.

No other Cybertronian might have, either.

Only spark technicians had been able to utilize to the Nodes, and that was not the same.  It did not count if one was given permission to access difficult files.

One had to earn them.

It had earned this file.

The Node had replied.

All other considerations vanished.  It opened the packet immediately, copying over the system access pointer it had been granted in order to locate the external entry point.  The formatting was unusual but expected, and with the experience it had gained in communicating with the Node through Divide it translated and re-wrote the pointer immediately to route through the network.

A moment later, it had forged a connection with the Node.

Closer than it had been before, the drone wasted no time in submitting a request for the Origination Code database…what Divide had called the Signature database.

It was the same request that Divide had sent before.  

The response, however, was likely not the same response Divide must have received.

The drone could only stare.

Access Error Expired.  To source return please.

It sent the request again, wondering if it was interpreting the message correctly.

Access Error Expired.  To source return please.

It did not like the word ‘error’ any more than it liked the word ‘source.’  Both had caused trouble for it previously, and both were causing trouble for it now.  

Beyond that, it barely understood the way the Node was speaking.  The words were recognizable but the phrasing was unusual, comparable to older dialects that the drone would have filed as archaic if it were monitoring through the tower.  

This complicated the procedure.  It would not only have to utilize unfamiliar protocols to deliver the data, it would also have to properly format its requests.

:: Define: Source_

It began a second query, then erased and tried again.

::Source: Definition_

The reply was much faster this time.

Core Access Direct. Suspended Level 1 authentication. To source return please. Connection terminating.

The drone had only enough time to read the message before the line dropped.  

There was a brief burst of static, and then nothing.

This…could not be.

However, it did not have a moment to consider what to do, because it could read a ping echo where a trace was beginning from the Node.  Immediately it focused on that, tracking down the echo through the network, rerouting the connection identifiers it had used to find the Node in the first place.  If it was traced, then things would be much, much worse than a simple failure.

It managed to redirect its pathway, barely, wiping and re-coding each location pointer at every branch it had been through until they pointed to an unused terminal in another transmission tower.  That would be enough to prevent whomever used the Node from learning where the drone’s requests had originated from.

However, it would not be enough to let the drone back in.

The fact that a trace was bounced at all meant that it would not be able to use the same path to locate the Node a second time.  Given how long it had taken the drone to locate that access point at all, finding another path would be exponentially more difficult.  Another path might not even exist.

It was almost out of time.

It was almost out of resources.

It had failed.

The drone pulled its one working input jack out of the socket.

That was frustration.

It recognized the emotion, but could not hold onto the feeling for long enough to determine where it had originated from.  

Outside of the systems that had been its home since activation, it could only feel small and insignificant.  Outside of the tower systems, there were no programs to assist it or extra memory for it to borrow. There was no access to the vast Cybertronian Network, or any of the trillions of files which came through the transmission tower each solar cycle.  There were no tasks to complete, or important documents requiring its attention.

There was nothing but it, its broken stump, and the numerous flat screens that had been provided to it.

It had never used them before.  It had not needed to. When connected to the tower, it could work with the data directly, needing no visual representation to assist it.  

Its data was displayed, regardless.  On two of the screens were waveforms: samples taken from Divide’s database that were running through a comparative analysis.  On another was the tower throughput record, constantly updating. One was mostly black, overwritten with bright green text that it wished it didn’t recognize.

Core Access Direct. Suspended Level 1 authentication. To source return please. Connection terminating.

It had failed.

It had failed.

It had failed.

…

It refused to fail.

No task had ever been 99.9% important.  With that great of a value, failure was not an option.  

If Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, Third Nexus Council, would not return to Kaon for another few cycles then the drone still had a few cycles to do what needed to be done.  The Node would not accept its transmission through remote access…so it was going to have to try something more direct.

To source return please.

It might not have been able to find a hardline into the Core of Cybertron itself, but it knew where to find somebody who could.  It had been built by somebody who could.

There was still one way to complete its assignment.

The drone stared down at its broken appendage, and then stared up at the blank monitor screen.

It needed the help of a spark technician.

It needed to see Perceptor.

To do that, it was going to have to be sent to the factory, and it was going to have to be sent to the factory immediately.  If it could time this correctly, it could manage that even while Ratbat was gone.

It drew back the arm with its damaged inputs.  It measured the distance carefully, and calculated appropriate trajectory and speed.  Then, it threw a punch.

Its stump flew forward, the velocity just enough to make up for the lack of strength behind it.

The monitor shattered.

It felt its broken connection pins make contact with the power supply inside, and had a moment to briefly consider that a memory wipe might have been preferable to this new concept of pain.

Then, it carefully prepared two error reports.  One, it transmitted directly to the tower, already knowing precisely how long it would take to filter through.  The other it delayed, set to forward to Redirect at what it hoped would be the correct moment, later on.

It didn’t have to make the calculations, but they would have to suffice.  

Its arm was hurting.  Its tower was damaged.  This would be its last chance to prove itself.  

Pulling the arm back, it stared at the ends, watching a single spark shoot out from a pair of inputs as they shorted.  Completing this order was the most important thing. Any obstacles encountered along the way would be dealt with.

It would speak to Perceptor, it would obtain the Origination Codes from the Core’s database, and then it would return, whole, back to here.  

To where it belonged.

Memories intact.

Efficient.

Successful.

Superior.

It wrote its final command, and let its arm drop back to its side.  Already, the sensations were becoming too much. There had been nothing in Divide’s memories to prepare it for the discomfort of pain.

The only memories he had were of music, and music had not caused him pain.

Except once.

The communications drone could not get a good grip on the fragment, however, and even as it tried it realized that it did not know if the fragment had come from Divide’s files or from its own.  It was hard to think through this many error signals.

It was hard to think, at all.  

Silence was creeping through its protocols, strange tendrils of nothingness that shut down its systems one by one.  

Silence, like the hush of an auditorium just before the opera began.  

Silence, waiting to be filled with noise.

It knew the song, and it knew the opening notes and the hauntingly familiar beat, but as it stood on the stage it could not find a voice to sing.  Something was still missing.

The Node flashed.  

The spotlight settled on him.

There was no sound.

It slipped into stasis lock, and fell backward to the floor.

Chapter Text

Today had been a good day, Ratbat decided, taking a small moment to stretch his long, sculpted legs in the plush interior of his personal transport.  Tonight would be a state dinner, where he was going to be giving a speech on new legislation that was meant to integrate drones into the working class.  Tomorrow, his all-important vote was finally going to occur.

He’d been checking the stances of his opponents and his advocates religiously, and, after an exhausting lunch with some of his constituents he’d confirmed precisely what he wanted to hear.

The vote was going to be his .

With the passing of his motion in the Senate, Sentinel Prime’s control over the drones would be significantly regulated, placing his army under the order of the City-States.  This would sit badly with the Matrix-bearer, Ratbat knew, which was precisely why the mech would try to take control again if ever there were riots in the streets.  Such riots would be all-too-simple a matter to arrange…

…and when Sentinel went against the Senate, taking the drone armies into his own hands to quell the dangerous rebellions, he’d have put himself into the perfect position to be replaced.

Ratbat had a great deal to celebrate .

In fact, he was thinking about hosting a masquerade.  It had been an event long in coming, and with the amount of work he’d been putting in of late he deserved a little bit of glory.  Budget cuts and economic downturns had emptied the cash-boxes of too many old-world lineages, but not his.  No. His empire was still strong.  This would be a show of that strength--a beacon to the masses that Cybertron was still fully in its golden era--a celebration to be anticipated and remembered like the brilliant balls of centuries past.  It would be a party like no other, a gala affair.

It would be an expensive affair as well, but worth it for the chance to rub at the peeling paint of his adversaries and gloat over the victory that was soon to be his.  

However, it would be a commemoration of more than just the control he’d gained over these new drone armies.  He would also be a richer mech after the legislation passed, and despite having to share the glory with both Decimus and Optarus that was nothing to sneer at.  The three of them had made an effective team, which had left Ratbat with more time to devote to other pursuits. Adding in the fact that his communications drone would be able to find the composer of the problematic remix when it finished going through Divide’s memories, there was little not to celebrate.

Which reminded him.

He was going to need music , if there was to be dancing.  Perhaps he ought to contact Assemble, and ask them to perform.  It would be delightful and ironic to invite them, now.

He could even host the party at the opera house, and see what his drone thought on it.  

Strangely, that amused him most of all. He’d known other politicians and businessmechs who had adopted drones as pets long before the technology had reached the zenith it enjoyed now.  He recalled the derision he’d felt at watching them purchase upgrades for the small creatures and vehicles, and especially recalled what a strange waste of time he’d felt it to be to celebrate their manufacture dates.

Thankfully, he’d never gone that far.  

But his communications drone had shown a preference for operatic music, and it bemused him to think on paying that back.  It was like…giving his chair some new upholstery in reward for being comfortable.

The entire reason the communications drone existed, after all, was because of him.  He’d commissioned it, he’d worked closely with the technicians to design it, he’d been exacting in his specifications to the tenth decimal.  It had not cost him merely credits to obtain the drone, but time as well--precious time.  He’d missed out on two key Senate votes in those cycles, granting unfortunate advantages to his foes that had been carefully calculated as acceptable loss.  

It had been worth it.

The only problem had been at the beginning, in having to return the first three drones because of how much personality they’d displayed.  That had worried him, especially considering the sensitivity of the data they’d been made to handle. He could not afford a creature that would render judgements with any factors other than logic, probability, and his exacting orders.  

It worried him still, the way he’d caught the communications drone snooping where he ought not to have been…

But with the memory wipe, all had seemed to return to normal.  He’d changed the commands, reworked the programming to be even more precise, and made certain that there were no codes which could generate autonomy.  Like all machines, the problems had stemmed from user error, and nothing more.

Drones could not simply rewrite themselves. The problem, as Divide had pointed out, had obviously been him.

Now, all was as it should have been.

He sat up, finishing his stretching just in time for the transport to make its final descent into the dock, and reached out to pick up his data-pad.  Absently tapping a few commands into his scheduled queue, he uploaded his current ideas so that he could begin with his Masquerade plans. Crystal trees for the entranceway.  Invitations for Assemble. Rental agreements from the opera house. He passed the information on to his secretary with the push of a button, and idly smoothed a hand over his armor, checking for dents or scratches.  

There were none.

Around him, his personal retinue of mechs was shifting, preparing to land after the lengthy flight to Vos.  He was looking forward to his speech already, the small flurry of excitement stirring in his circuitry, anticipating the attentions of the crowd and the delightful smoothness of the Vossian high-grade energon.  This was one of his favorite places to visit.

A small ping from his data-pad distracted him, momentarily, pulling his optics from the tall spires of the senatorial estate.  He moved to dismiss the message, glancing over the priority and subject, considering a hiatus from such tasks until the night was done.  There was little that his secretaries could not handle…

But he refrained.

Redirect had titled the communication with a priority alert.  That was unusual enough to unnerve him, to make him spare a moment to glance over the words in detail as the transport carrier slid into the silver metal enclave of the bay.  This message was more insidious than it at first appeared.

Something was wrong with his communications drone.

There was too much hinging on that drone right now.  He could not trust it to be left on its own if it was malfunctioning, given that it had access to a tower that could transmit anywhere in the world.  He could not instruct his servants to instigate a memory-wipe upon it either, as they lacked the clearance or the voiceprint to even try. Even hiring a technician to perform one would have been out of the question, with Divide’s illegally-obtained data still inside of it where any experienced operator might see.

This could become a serious issue very fast.  With his travelling due to keep him away until tomorrow night, something had to be done, now, before he entered sight of the public.

“Patch me through, quickly,” he whispered to the device, glancing toward the doorway as he felt the soft thud of the landing gear touch down.  

“Sir.”  Instantaneously, the always-harried visage of Redirect appeared on his screen.

Unwilling to waste time, Ratbat dove straight into the point.  “What is my communications drone doing , precisely?”  

“The drone, sir?  Well. It isn’t turning on.”

“Why was it off? ”

“I do not know, sir.  It was like that when I found it.  It appears to have damaged itself and one of the monitors, but the error reports it sent do not explain why.”

Ratbat frowned, rising with his officials, meeting red and purple optics that were turning his direction.  He needed to be fast in making whatever decision he was going to make. “Monitor it. Attempt to restart it again, and try again in one cycle.  If it has not reset by that point…” What options did he even have? “Return it to the factory. Have Perceptor download its memory on a secure disk for me, and make sure the technicians take care of the problem and repair it discretely.  I want it back in my office and operational before the Senate vote.”

“Yes, sir.”

The first of his procession was already departing as the call concluded, and he tucked the data-pad into its special slot on his armor.  It slid in perfectly as the door opened, just in time for him to follow his entourage stately out into the glimmering silver lights of Vos.

This was worrying.

It was worrying, but he refused to let it get to him right now.  He had an entire night ahead of him, and an exciting day tomorrow.  

Redirect could handle one simple transport of a drone back to a factory…and in the end this would be nothing more than a minor inconvenience he’d surmounted.  

He’d have his drone.  He’d put the technicians who worked on his drone under surveillance.

And soon, he’d have an army.

The Golden Age of Ratbat was poised to begin.

Chapter Text

For the first few moments when it came online, the drone was unable to pinpoint where it was.  

Long-range transmission was down.  Satellite communication was down. Visual feeds were down.  All systems were operating on minimum requirements, and its engines remained off.  

Without knowledge of its current situation, it chose to remain inactive. Without any indication that it was safe, it opened access to the only external input still available to it…and listened.

There was plenty to hear.

Beginning at the lowest ranges of audible sound, it processed deep, rhythmical vibrations, recording a resilient pounding with a high harmonic tang.  A low thrum accompanied the noise, consistent, with the slightest lilt of a 120 degree phase shift whirring 240 triplets per nanoclick-- an induction motor.  

Not just one.

Amplitude spikes in corresponding frequencies indicated multiple motors powering multiple machines.  There were over 20 motors by its estimate, each with a low bass pounding to accompany it: manufacturing equipment, hammering forms in metal.  

Other sounds permeated the micro cycles of silence in-between the beats and the drone increased its audial sensitivity to its maximum setting, sampling at its highest, near-analog precision, until it could hear words underneath the noise.  Mechs were talking, discussing times that they got off their shift.

It did not recognize the voices.

It did, however, recognize the subjects they spoke about as they drifted from one topic to the next.  Gladiator statistics. Racing results. How to best retrieve the broken torso that was stuck in the assembly line’s gears…

Ah.

That was the confirmation it required.  

Instantly, it focused on other noises, seeking validation in the echoes and the muffling coefficients, calculating average wave propagations through duracrete walls and insulation.  It knew its location now. It was in a storage room, alone, surrounded by the husks of other drones. It was far, far away from the transmission tower.

It was in the drone factory, its origin point.  

It had arrived.

Unwilling to waste another moment, it began awakening the systems that it had shut down, supplying the proper codes and resets to undo the temporary offline virus it had installed within itself just before going into stasis.  Thus far, its plan was working. The only unknown had been the pain from its inputs, which had shorted when crashing into the monitor. That had significantly impaired its ability to calculate at the last moment, adding an increased potential for failure.  It had not known if it would arrive intact.

It had still tried.

Before going offline, it had estimated a maximum probability of successful restart to occur after 42.6 decicycles of deactivation, allowing time for Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, Third Nexus Council, to reach the outskirts of Vos according to his last updated schedule.  It had instructed its error message to wait until the close-of-day to be delivered to Redirect, anticipating that he would be more likely to respond when his shift was nearly over and no other clients required his attention.

The drone had timed each action as carefully as it could in the moments before it had gone offline, using prediction models it had programmed, determining in what best-case scenario Redirect would be forced to contact its master, and in what best-case scenario the senator would be too hurried to let the problem persist.  It had, in essence, known how each mech would react in order to get the desired result: a trip to the drone manufacturing facility. The fact that it was here meant it had succeeded in its mission, and it had done so entirely on its own merits.

Yet it still did not know how to accomplish what it needed to do now.  Somehow, it had to contact Perceptor before the memory-wipe that would be scheduled for it occurred.  To do that, it needed to get out of this closet.

It…needed hands.

That need was becoming suddenly pressing in its cramped environment.  It was wedged in between two boxes, its tactile input warning of significant pressure each time it tried to move its legs.  Something was hindering it, binding it from accomplishing any motion greater than a turning of the head. It was trapped.

Of all the obstacles that it had attempted to plan for, the inability to remove oneself from overly secure packaging material had not been one.

It had limited options.

Its sight was still returning, slowly, the delicate sensors underneath its visor warming as they shifted through the spectrum, attempting to find light.  The view was fuzzy at first, unprocessed and incomprehensible until a baseline was established: darkness…further darkness…and then something else.

Another box?

No.

In front of it was a new shape entirely.

The light it was detecting consisted of the faintest rays, soft blue gleams reflecting off of a glistening surface, illuminating the contours of the form.  As its sensors calibrated, it was able to calculate the incidence angle of that light, and from there better discern the shape of what it must have been positioned next to.

It stared, uncomprehending…at itself.

Itself, reflected in the gleaming visor of another drone.

It had never seen itself before like this.

Not in the darkness.

Had it?

It hadn’t.

Despite that, a memory was tugging at it, distracting it from the precarious situation it had found itself drawn into.  

It did not want to deal with any memories right now.

Memories were becoming the problem: its lack of memories, Divide’s plethora of memories, and memories that it could not identify as originating from either the former or the latter.

The drone was disturbed that so many of Divide’s files had permanently rooted themselves within its own directories, planted because it had originally needed faster access to them while working on the database.  At the time, it had seemed like a logical step to take.

Now, it was having difficulty determining which ones should stay and which ones should go.  

In the end, it would be irrelevant.  

Sentator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, Third Nexus Council, would remove them all.

“You think it is actually possible to separate the signals in a spark?”  Perceptor’s voice began in a darkness as thick as the one the drone was currently occupying.

Resigned to at least one playthrough, the drone allowed the memory to continue.

It did not believe it had uncovered this one before.

“I do,” its own voice spoke, a voice that it had come to recognize as Divide’s.

“Not just for recording purposes, however,” Perceptor continued, giving the drone a chance to try modulating the output so that it could better process the visual component of the file.  “I am wondering…could you separate out those spark radials enough to have them sustain themselves?”

Slowly, the world around the drone spun into focus.

The darkness hadn’t been an error in the file, it was just nearly pitch black in the memory.

The light teal lights of Perceptor’s seam-lines were moving along in a cramped tunnel ahead of Divide, faintly illuminating the path as they traversed it cautiously.  The drone could see the scientist holding a portable headlight, its brightness streaming into the shadows like it had a mind of its own, occasionally filling in flashes of both rock and circuitry enmeshed together, ancient and rusted and powerless.  Divide hadn’t seen anything like it before outside of the tunnels beside his Node.

The brief glimpses he had of the equipment made it difficult to identify, but it had to have been Cybertronian.  There were markings on the surface that Divide didn’t recognize, which meant they must have been old enough to really fascinate the scientist accompanying him.

Perceptor, however, did not even stop to take a closer look.

This should have surprised Divide, but he was long past being surprised by any of the technician’s quirks.  For now, he was happy just to be out of their domicile, exploring the lost corridors surrounding the Core.

He’d never been able to convince another spark technician to do anything like this with him, and he hadn’t bothered asking any of the other Authenticators.  Only Perceptor had the desire to satiate his curiosity, to delve into the unknown, and only Perceptor had the nerve to ask him directly.

The other Authenticators…well.

They didn’t need to explore.

“Think of it like an orchestra, Perceptor,” Divide began, eager to turn his thoughts back toward more pleasant matters.  “Once you’ve recorded a song, you can analyze the signal. You can pick out every note that is played and you can distinguish one instrument from the next and you can learn about the room that the song was recorded in.”  He moved forward carefully, picking his way over the rubble of a half-collapsed wall. “Unless you know the particular envelopes to describe an instrument’s timbre, however, you’re never going to figure out what the instrument was, or what it looked like.  Until now, we’ve been working without those envelopes. We have only been partially able to understand all the frequencies within a spark.”

Ahead of him, the scientist paused, confronted with a choice of two tunnels to take. “I don’t usually hear you going into this much detail when sparks are involved, Divide.”

“Well, I don’t usually have a good musical metaphor on hand.  You’re lucky I’d thought of one this morning.”

“Indeed I am.”  Perceptor turned the headlights down one side tunnel, peering carefully inside.  “And if I’m to take your analogy one step further, you’re implying that once the envelope is determined…one can identify the instrument, and even recognize that instrument in other songs.”

“You’ve got it.”  Divide smiled. “Which is exactly what you and I have been working on—what you and I have identified in sparks :   The instruments.  It’s taking us a step past classification of basic emotions and destiny probability trends.  We already knew how to read the frequency of a spark and determine the likely outcome…just like with an instrument.  We knew what notes it is capable of playing because we heard the notes in the song. Once we can understand the instrument itself, however, and how it makes the notes…”

“Then we can build our own instruments.”  Perceptor concluded, pulling the light away from the tunnel to glance back at Divide.  

“Or fix ones that were broken.”  Divide confirmed, a hand rising to his throat.  Distracted, he scratched at the cabling along his neck, remembering how tight it had felt once.  “What do you think?”

“I think we’ve hit a dead end.”  Perceptor replied, glumly.

“In our theory?”

The red glow where Perceptor’s head was at shook in the darkness, and the beams of the headlights illuminated a collapsed wall two dozen meters ahead.  “No, in our tunnels.” Pursing his lips together, the scientist climbed away from the junction. “This is as far as we go, today.”

“We could try that other juncture about 40 meters back.”

Perceptor paused for a moment, considering.  “No. No, it’s alright. We can look again tomorrow.”

It wasn’t difficult to see that Perceptor was more upset by this than he wanted to let on, but Divide was not sure he wanted to ask why.  He’d only questioned his friend on the matter once, the first time they’d gone exploring together, and all Perceptor had been able to answer at the time had been that they were looking ‘to make amends.’  It was as cryptic as such an avid mech of the sciences had ever been around Divide, and so Divide had let it be.

If there was one thing he had learned in the Core, it was patience.  

Perhaps Perceptor would tell him some day, or they’d find ‘the amends.’

Either way, Divide would know.

However, there might have been a way to find out faster still.  “We could try programming a simple drone to explore for us down here when we’re at work.  One of the sweepers could do it…”

Perceptor shook his head, turning to brush past Divide as he headed back down the tunnel.  His optics did not meet Divide’s, and it wasn’t difficult to hear that his engine was running in a lower gear.

“The number of functions a sweeper would need to be programmed with in order to find what I am looking for is too complex,” the scientist explained, keeping the headlight steady for them as they headed back.  “It would have to be capable of reasoning and deduction, and it would have to know when to return for fuel or to report its findings. Beyond that, there is too much interference from these ancient electrical systems.  Some of them are still active, and every current generated here or at the Core would block signals that we’d transmit. We’d be wasting our time trying to build something that is more efficient for a sentient mech to do…”

The scientist trailed off, his voice echoing off the rock walls and back to Divide.  Unexpectedly he stopped, and Divide nearly ran into him before he’d turned around, blue optics blazing brightly.

“Divide,” he started, looking entirely too energized to be contemplating anything sane, “Can a single instrument produce a worthwhile song?”

Divide backed up, finding the change in Perceptor much too intense for such close quarters.  “That depends on if you like my singing.”

“I do, but that is not the point.  What I mean to say is…Divide. Could we produce a few spark radials to operate independently in a basic unit without producing a whole spark?”

Now Divide was glad he’d backed away, because what Perceptor was suggesting sounded completely…

Possible.

It sounded like something they could do.  

It sounded like something that would take a while to do, but that would test the theory they’d been working on.  It would prove their theory.

Being able to produce a few free radials also meant that they’d be able to work on a few free radials, and see if it was possible to change them.  Safely. Without damaging a real spark.

“Perceptor, I think you’re onto something.”

“I had to get my name from somewhere,” the teal-striped mech confirmed.

“Well.  So did I.  In fact—“

The communications drone cut the playback.

It already knew where this conversation was heading, and the backwash of emotion was starting to bother it.

This was a waste of time.

Always before, it had let Divide’s memories play because they’d always managed to assist it in some way.  Generally, they’d been exceptionally helpful in matters of the song database.

Now, however, it was only proving to be distracting.  

It could not see how Divide and Perceptor’s usage of a…of a drone to accomplish their tasks was comparable to its situation, now.  It wasn’t looking for something nebulous underground. It was too busy being wrapped in approximately 46.8 yards of packaging material above ground in a closet.

It should have anticipated this.

It should have known that Redirect would follow shipping policy explicitly.

However, it had already lost too much time with the memory to spend any longer thinking on what it had done wrong.

Instead, its optics focused on the packaging ties, noting potential points of stress where it could break the plastic that constrained it.  Or…where it could have broken the plastic, if it had possessed appendages and enough spare room inside of its restraints to use them. Lacking both, it was still stuck, still staring at the faceplates of another drone, still watching itself in mirror images as it struggled in vain.  Its own lights were blazing, warmed by the heat from its engine, casting a brilliant magenta and blue haze around the confines of the room. Despite the pressure points that it had noted, the packaging material was holding tight. Despite the imprint of a door a scant few meters away, escape was impossibly distant.

It had failed again.

It no longer knew the course of action to take.  Staring at its reflection, it could not process what would happen next.

To be taken.

To be shut down.

To have its memory wiped.

To never accomplish the directive it had given itself.

To have no purpose.

This reflection that it could see…this creature of blue paint and elaborate custom design…was stuck.  It had no programming it could apply to a situation in which it was incarcerated, bound utterly in place.  It was not strong enough to break its bonds. It had no hands with which to untie itself. It was not capable of leaving this room.  Not yet.

It did not know what it was capable of.

It was not entirely helpless, however.  Despite the increasingly desperate nature of its situation, it had chosen this.  It had been aware of the risks, and it had been aware of the possibility of failure, and it had been aware of the likelihood that it would not return without its memory wiped.

That was still undesirable.

However, failure was even more undesirable.

It might currently lack the programming, the power, and the dexterity to accomplish its goals…

But perhaps it didn’t need to always be the smartest, or the strongest, or the most agile.  Those were not its skills.

It was a communications drone.

It borrowed, always, from the world around it.

In the tower it interfaced with massive machinery in order to use the tools it needed access to: vast databases, relay satellites, transmission equipment, and incredible processing power.

Here, it lacked that.

However, there was another tool at its disposal.

It tilted its head…and made a realization, observing the exposed connection port on the side of the nearby drone, glancing down to see what parts of itself were still constrained by packaging.  Its legs were bound, its arms were bound, its torso was bound, but as it had suspected, the small compartment which housed its cables was free…

…And while it did not have grips upon the end of them that could undo the plastic ties, it could plug into any outlet.  The answer had been staring at it, all along.

The memory had been right.

It could use a drone to help it, just as Divide and Perceptor had.

It didn’t currently have hands, but it would in a few nanoclicks.

It let its cable snake out of its chest, and it connected to the other drone.

This was what it had been made for: to interface with other systems, locate what it needed, and take advantage of whatever data it could get.  It would take time to boot up the drone’s motor functions and assimilate its programming, especially since that programming was for appendages that it was not familiar with.

It would take time, but it would work.

It would work.

Slowly, siphoning power carefully, it watched the other drone’s red lights come on.  It stared.

The drone stared back.

It tilted its head.

The drone tilted its head back.

Then it sent a simple command, and the drone reacted, reaching out awkwardly towards the packaging material that had bound it for safe transport.

Drones, directing drones.

Completing a task.

Together.

Perhaps Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, Third Nexus Council, would have been pleased.  Perhaps he would have been angry.

But now, at least, the drone would have more information to present to its owner when its owner found out.  It was going to talk to Perceptor…

And then, it would see what it could do next.

Chapter Text

The heat that morning had been oppressive.

Megatronus remembered how the first blast hit him when he’d stepped off the public transport, wrapping around him thickly, forcing his cooling systems to cycle faster to keep up.  The grey smog that always overhung the manufacturing zone had been dryer than usual, cloying, trapping the warmth below it like some hazardous oven out to bake him back to raw materials.  

It was summer.

It was the closest he would ever come to feeling summer, anyhow.  It was a vast change from the Underground, a place where it was always dark and regulated, so far down in miles of over-built roadways and cramped housing that the temperatures only ranged from ‘cool’ to ‘freezing.’  Heat was a luxury, exotic, sold like a commodity or shared as a status symbol from one mech to the next. He’d seen hundreds drawn to the arenas for the fire-pits alone, gathering around the burning generators that would smelt-down the unusable parts of losers long after the crowds had returned home.

Heat was energy.

Energy cost money .  

It was only on the surface that energy was free to anyone who could convert it.   It only needed a spark, some ingenuity…

And something to burn.

Already, Megatronus felt like he was on fire.  The impending match with Titan had kept him full of anticipation all day, nudging out equations and statistics, corrupting his compilations and data-tests.  Those weren’t important, right now. He longed to move again, longed to feel the rough, sandy surface of the arena floor beneath his treads, to hear the roar of the crowds instead of the roar of machinery, to feel the tension at the end of a blade as it struck the armor of his opponent…

Soon.

He would feel that soon.

There was something here he had to accomplish, first.

Looking up at the factory ceiling, he tried to keep his engines calm.  Between the heat and his anticipation, it had been difficult to concentrate all morning.  Already he had written two infinite loops into his programs—errors which had caused him to shut down the entire station and reboot it from scratch.  He didn’t have time for those sorts of mistakes, today.

Today, he had to finish the drone program.

This would be his last chance before his match with Titan.  If he could convince the Altihex team to work with him, to find someone who could get the master chip taken to the processor production factory, then everything he’d done here would not have been in vain.  New drones would have the sentience shell programming, and would start behaving in ways that would violate the legal limits for their behavior profiles. With those concerns added to the other problems drones were facing in the media—especially the worries about drone sparks—then the drone factories would have no choice but to close down permanently.  Workers would be hired again.

His world would return to the way it had been: not perfect, but better than it was right now.

There were only two missing pieces: the program itself, which he was almost finished with…and the drone spark frequency, which he had yet to get from Perceptor.

Glancing over to the spark technician, Megatronus could see him crouched over the body of a drone, running diagnostics with a tool on one arm while the oscilloscope hung off the wrist of the other.  The drone they usually worked on had been taken to storage while Perceptor was pursuing another project, fixing a malfunctioning servant that Senator Ratbat had sent them a decacycle prior. It had been an odd change to walk into that morning, especially when Perceptor had seemed so eager to finish the first iteration of their program the day before, but it did leave Megatronus with the free time to take care of the coding himself.

Thus far, the scientist had completely left him alone.  Instead of peering over Megatronus’s shoulder awkwardly while he was trying to compile his code, Perceptor was checking over every centimeter of the broken drone, looking at each connection in an attempt to determine what had happened to it.

Megatronus, on the other hand, could already tell what had happened to it.

It had been stabbed. Frequently.

They were clean intrusions, too—expertly made by someone with a much fancier grade of weapon’s steel than gladiators generally had access to.  Most of its primary systems had been punctured, making the technician’s job of figuring out what had gone wrong prior to Senator Ratbat ‘defending himself’ against it very difficult.

Megatronus hadn’t thought he’d ever feel sorry for a drone.  This one, however, seemed to have been the victim of a very thorough defense.

“There.”  Perceptor sighed, making a final connection and taking a step back.  “The wiring department did an adequate job of replacing most of its innards, and I’ve done what I could for its processor without changing any of the coding.  I should be able to power it up to view its behavior now, but…” The technician looked straight at Megatronus.

“But?” Megatronus offered, feeling suddenly put under a spotlight.

“I’d feel more comfortable if you were assisting me.  I have no way of knowing what to expect from this unit.”

“Ah,” the gladiator smirked, standing from the stool he’d been using at the programming console.  “I see. You are looking for some extra precautions? Maybe some…defense?”

“In a manner of speaking.”  Perceptor nodded. “I have never entirely been able to forget that move you used against me when I tried following you home.”

Megatronus couldn’t help but laugh, joining the scientist to look over the offline drone and forgiving him for the moment for not standing overly close to either the drone or Megatronus.  “Really? I can’t imagine that you liked it that much.”

“No. No, of course I didn’t.” The scientist attempted to contain a shudder but was not successful.  “However, it was very effective at disabling me without causing any harm, and we could use that sort of control if something goes wrong.  This is a very expensive piece of machinery.” Perceptor gestured to the unit in front of him, marking several of the customized panels as well as the particular gloss finish used.  Although Megatronus couldn’t distinguish its exact composition—and he was mildly glad he didn’t know that much about drones yet—he could still tell that getting a comparable coat of paint for himself would have cost him the proceeds from at least three winner’s cups.  

“You still think of them as machines, don’t you?” Megatronus mused, aware that he’d just been pursuing that line of thinking, himself.

“I will until our new program is finished.  As much as it seems they are capable of imitating sentience, I’ve seen no indication that any drone has ever accomplished more than its programming allowed for—or engaged in anything unexpected that was not a result of user error.”

“Except this one.”  Megatronus prodded the drone in front of him, and crossed his arms.

“We don’t know what happened with this one, yet.”  Perceptor reached out, closing the open torso casing.  “But we will. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Good.  Then let’s begin.”  Calmly, the scientist entered a number of commands into the drone’s external control datapad, and then stepped back.  Both sets of diagnostic equipment were held at the ready.

Megatronus braced himself for the worst.

However, nothing seemed to happen at all.

The drone was booting up, sounding very much like the hundreds of other drones that Megatronus had heard activating.  There were a few null sounds produced as various systems tested themselves out and were found to not be operating at peak capacity—something to be expected, when there were holes that he could see through—but other than that nothing ominous occurred.  The drone finished coming online…and continued to lay there.

It did not move, at all.

That was a problem.

Megatronus frowned.  “It isn’t requesting input.”

Perceptor didn’t seem to like it any more than he did, and raised his diagnostic scanner to begin his analysis.  “No. No, it isn’t. Senator Ratbat did ask for a drone to be built without a vocal modulator, but it was not this one.  This is a service model…so it should be inquiring what it can help us with today.” Already, the technician’s fingers were flying over the datapad, searching for some explanation for the lack of activity.

“Was its processor damaged?”

Perceptor scoffed, taking offense a little more readily than usual.  “Of course its processor was damaged.  That is what we’re attempting to track down!  However, I checked the device myself, and its primary operations did not appear to be affected.  Theoretically, it should be doing something right now.”  

Warily, Megatronus held out an arm, broaching the drone’s visual space.  He waved it back and forth slowly over the blank faceplates of the drone.

Still, nothing occurred.

Perceptor sighed, lowering his diagnostic scanner and moving to get a closer look himself.  “This is going to take more effort than I thought. Thank you, of course…but you can return to your programming.”

“Are you sure?”  Letting his arm fall back to his side, Megatronus glanced back to his station, and then again to Perceptor…wondering why the scientist was so eager to work on this project alone.  He’d been acting strangely all day, though it was difficult to pin a label onto what was causing it.

There was definitely an element of distraction to the technician’s movements…which Megaronus couldn’t help but consider taking advantage of, glancing to see if the oscilloscope was still attached to his left arm.  It was.

“Yes.  It is not like you’ll be far if something goes wrong.”  As if just noticing the oscilloscope himself, Perceptor raised it to take a reading off the drone.

“Just be careful,” Megatronus cautioned, returning to his station and hoping… hoping …that Perceptor would have some reason to set the oscilloscope down soon.  

“I shall,” the scientist mused with a small smile.  “As much as technicians are known to die early from working so closely with drone sparks, it would be an entirely different matter to actually be killed by one.  A drone, that is—not a spark.”

The words made Megatronus laugh, but as he settled back into his station and fixed a programming loop to not cause endless repetitions, Megatronus wished he could have actually enjoyed the humor.  At this point, much as he hated to admit it, an accident that was not caused by him—such as the serving drone actually going haywire-- would give him the perfect opportunity to take the oscilloscope and go.

He couldn’t have hoped to be that lucky, however.

No.

Today, he’d have to create his own luck.

Soon.

First, he had to finish the program.

Typing in a few final commands, he sat back and let the system work on compiling the new code, listening to the small beeps on the datapad that Perceptor was working with.  It was amazing he could hear them in the factory, at all, but then again the factory noises had become so ingrained within his conscious that they faded away.

This was home to him: a second home, out of the Underground.  He knew its workings intricately, knew what sort of oil went into each piece of manufacturing equipment and what sort of dangerous chemicals the anti-oxidation alloys of the drone-shells were composited from.  He knew how many workers the factory employed, and he knew who the major stockholders were. He knew where the spark technicians slept.

He could have been happy here.

Once.

Today would be the end to that happiness, one way or another.

“Oh,” Perceptor said, and Megatronus looked up, startled.  He hadn’t expected to be interrupted again so soon, especially since Perceptor had barely started in his analysis.

“What is it?” He asked, already rising from the stool, preparing himself for an incident that he still hoped was coming.  

The drone on the table was not moving, however.  Perceptor was still standing over it, still holding far too many tools and making far too many measurements at once, but nothing visually seemed to be wrong.  

“It’s the spark,” the scientist replied, and Megatronus noticed which device was pointed at the drone: the oscilloscope that he needed so desperately.

“Technician, you are going to have to give me more information than that,” he growled, not particularly interested in attempting to divine some new lesson from Perceptor today.  The metal pounders in the framework section had started their work early, and no matter how accustomed to the factory he became those always gave him a headache.

“I would be glad to.  Perhaps you can even help me?”  Perceptor offered, and Megatronus attempted to forget his irritation.  An invitation like this was rare.

“My program is still compiling, so I have a few minutes,” he replied, moving once more towards the table with the unresponsive drone.  

“Good.  Because this is something…”  The scientist trailed off awkwardly, and Megatronus’s plating twitched in agitation.  

Usually, the spark technician was much too expository.  Hearing him be so vague was strange, and Megatronus didn’t like it.  “Something?”

“Well, it is related to something that I learned recently.  And now, I’m wondering if putting you to work on programming processors was such a good idea.”

Megatronus stopped cold.

This was the sort of line he would have expected to hear at the beginning of their relationship—back when he’d assumed the technician was like any other primary-ranked mech.  This was not what he was expecting to hear, now, after they had been working together for over half of a stellar cycle, learning each other’s secrets.  

Perceptor had been the one to recommend that he attend the science academy.

Surely after that he would not switch his mind so suddenly?

In front of him, Perceptor took a large, careful step away, and Megatronus realized that his own expression must have been thunderous.

At the moment, he did not see any reason to change it.

“What.”

“P-please!  Do let me explain.  That came out entirely wrong.”

Trying not to seem nearly as angry as he felt, Megatronus put a hand up to his helm, staving off the tension in his processor that he knew was inevitable.  “I am hoping that it did, and that you did not ask for my help just to insult me. We’ve been working on this program together for lunar cycles, Perceptor…”

“I know!  I do. And, please, the emphasis in what I said before was not meant to be on ‘you.’  It…it wasn’t. It’s the drone sparks that are behaving strangely, it isn’t anything you’ve done.”

“Then why are you still backing away?”

Perceptor seemed to grow very small at that question, his panels flattening against his frame.  In the noise of the factory, Megatronus could not even hear his smaller engine making its usual steady rumble.

To the mech’s credit, his retreat did stop.  

“What is wrong with the sparks, Perceptor?”

The spark technician straightened.  He straightened, and calmly set the extra diagnostic equipment down on the table next to the drone, leaving only the oscilloscope and a small data pad in his possession. Megaronus noticed that his optics were dim, and were staring towards the torso plates of the drone, as if unwilling to make visual contact with the gladiator.

Something was off.

“They’ve changed,” Perceptor sighed, his fingers tapping a single beat against the table before his blue optics finally moved upwards to meet Megatronus.  “A drone’s processor is only built to withstand a plus or minus 7 percent fluctuation in its spark output. The fluctuation in this drone is higher…around ten percent, which could only be accounted for if it had gone through something traumatic.  It’s not functioning because its processor was not built to adapt to whatever it went through, unlike ours…” The technician trailed off, before pursing his lips and finally looking up at Megatronus.

“What are you saying? And what does that have to do with me? ”

“I’m saying that I did not program the processors correctly to begin with!  I…didn’t know how to make something complex enough to handle spark-shifts at the time.  No one did. We’ve never been able to duplicate the processors that come out of the Core, because Cybertronian processors are too intricate to duplicate.  That’s why we made drones the way we did to start with.”

Megatronus felt his hand clenching into a ball, and had to physically restrain himself to open it back up again.  This information would have been useful earlier. He hadn’t known that he was basically trying to program something that even a genius like Perceptor hadn’t been successful with.  “Tell me more.”

“I shouldn’t…”  Perceptor said, shaking his head.  “I’ve already told you too much. We’re going to need to start over, either way.  We’re going to have to reformat the processors to be more adaptive…”

“That’s what we’re doing , Perceptor!  It’s what we’ve been doing!”  He gestured back towards his programming console, where the very code that Perceptor was referring to was finished and compiling.  “The problem isn’t with your processors—you just said it. The problem is with the sparks. They change. They change like ours do.  They respond like ours do.  Whatever ‘imprints’ you are using…is there a difference between them and us?”

Perceptor’s head shook again, back and forth rhymthically as if it were a denial instead of a response.  

“ Is there a difference? ” Megatronus took another large step closer, and again Perceptor fled, moving around the table, glancing between the drone and Megatronus and the oscilloscope on his arm.  “Tell me! I don’t get what’s wrong with you today…”

“I can’t tell you.  I can’t tell you, because it’s something that I do not know.  It wasn’t me that designed the spark imprints, I’ve just been working with the information that he gave me.  I just know enough…” The scientist held up the oscilloscope as if it were a shield on his forearm. “I know enough to understand what has changed.  What has changed in this drone…” He looked passed the oscilloscope, and held Megatron’s expression with an intensity that was normally reserved for analysis.  “And what has changed in you.”

Having absolutely no idea how to react to this magnitude of a pronouncement, Megatronus only stared.

“It is not a bad thing.  It isn’t. I was worried that it was, in your case, but maybe it’s not.  Our sparks are meant to change, after all…to adapt over time to the world and to the situations we encounter.  When I compared yours to the Signature database—“

“You did what? ”  Now, finally having some idea of what Perceptor was talking about, Megatronus could not keep the disapproval from his voice.  “I thought you had only taken a reading of my spark to serve as collateral, Perceptor. So that we could trust each other…”

“I do trust you!”  The technician replied, adamant.  “And what I did I was doing for you.  I wanted to see why you’d been classified so low, why the technicians who rated you had confined you to life as a miner when you’re clearly too brilliant to be less than secondary rank.  I thought you were right! It is a mistake to test for caste.”

Megatronus was blown away by what Perceptor was saying.  He’d…taken Megatronus’s spark data? He’d compared it to the reading that had been done when Megatronus had been sparked?  “But why hide that from me? Why not simply ask? ”

“To be frank, it’s because you are a little terrifying!”  Perceptor admitted, laying his empty arm across his chest-plate.  “It is all there, in your spark record. Your capabilities, your behavior patterns…the very reason you were sent to the mines in the first place was because of your propensity for violence and, and…and aggression .  I did not believe it when I saw it, but neither could I deny that it was true…”

“Violence and aggression?  Perceptor…” Megatronus frowned, taking a step forward.  “Have I ever threatened you?”

The spark technician was staring right at him.

He was staring right at him , admitting that he thought Megatronus was aggressive…and he took a step back.

“No.  No, you haven’t threatened me directly.  I know you, and…and I meant it when I said I trust you.”

“You’re still retreating, Perceptor,” Megatron spoke, softly, hating the way that someone could say they trusted him even as they fled.  

“And…you…are still lying,” Perceptor said softly.  “What have you been doing since the mine closed on Outpost 21?” the spark technician asked, and suddenly Megatronus understood.

He didn’t want to, but he understood.  

He understood why Perceptor had been acting so unusual today, and why technician was suddenly so reluctant to give him any more information.  He understood why the mech who had been his friend was moving away from him, and asking questions, and gazing at him with that…that damned uncertainty in his optics.

“You looked me up by more than my spark code, didn’t you.”

Perceptor winced.  “It’s been almost ten stellar cycles since the mine closed.  I hadn’t even noticed at first…but you wear your treads as if they are too heavy.  You wear them as if they have not been on your shoulders for a long, long time.” His voice was wavering, but he continued.  “There have been so many times when I almost thought…I almost thought that you were up to something. The way you arranged to have the processor pallet smashed.  The way you were sneaking chips home. The way that the other mechs in your apartment looked at you…”

He’d known it, all this time?  He’d seen that much?

Megatronus was taken aback that Perceptor had been so…so perceptive and yet let them continue to work together.

“That was why I wished to see your spark code.  To understand you better. To learn if mechs on the surface had changed so much while I was living in the Core.  I believed in you. I still would like to, but I need to know. Can I trust you?   Can I?”

There was pleading underneath the words.  

Behind him, Megatronus heard the confirmation ping of a successful compilation of code.

His program was done.

In front of him, Perceptor was waiting for an answer, and past him the machines still pounded their cacophony of sound, over and over again.

He didn’t belong here.

He’d been a fool to think he did.

“No,” he said, finally, and with a swiftness that he’d been holding back for far too long he moved forward to strike.

Each beat of the factory was a well-placed hit: one along the abdomen, near the fuel lines.  One on the side of the torso, to disable the arm carrying the oscilloscope. One to the head, to knock the processor out of alignment.

Perceptor went down in three hits, timed to the clockwork perfection of metal carapaces being hammered into form.

Megatronus’s program was finished.

His work here was done.

He stood over the unconscious body of a mech that he’d considered his friend, listening to the sound his engine made.  In just a moment, the supervisor would be by on his usual rounds. In just a moment, he’d have to begin the cleanup sequence that he’d been going over in his head since his talk with Frenzy.  In a moment, he’d have his program downloaded onto a new, shiny master chip, and he’d be well on his way.

In a moment.

Perceptor had lost faith in him because of a spark reading.  Because some spark technician once, a long time ago, had noticed that within Megatronus’s spark lay the seeds for violence and aggression.

That small footnote had doomed him.

Now, violence and aggression were the only choices that he had.

“I trusted you, too.”  He couldn’t help but murmur as he bent down, clasping Perceptor’s fingers tightly over the datapad the other held.  “Maybe that was my mistake.” With a single pull, the oscilloscope came free in his hands.

It was the last piece to the puzzle…the only piece that he was lacking.  With it, he could read any drone’s spark and alter his processor code to work on them.  With it, he had the power to change the future of Cybertron.

He didn’t have enough time to appreciate it fully.  The supervisors were always on their rounds and Perceptor’s unconscious body needed to be moved.  He needed to download the drone program onto a chip, and then he needed to escape.

The serving drone was still lying on the table when he finished, still powered on and still unresponsive.  Perceptor had taught him nearly everything he’d learned about drone processors—about the way they worked, about how they were dependent upon their sparks—but Perceptor had given him no information about the sparks themselves until today.

Drone sparks responded to trauma.  

Drone sparks responded to pain.

Well.  So did his.

He was going to put an end to that pain, right now.

If he was correct, then adding an extra two litres of nitrium to the fuel of the conveyor belt motor at the wall junction would be enough to start a chain reaction.  With nitrium injected, the engines would spark four times hotter, pushing the speed past capacity. After five minutes or more of running under that strain, they would explode.  Even better, with additional tanks of energon nearby, the explosion would ricochet through the factory, spilling volatile chemicals onto nearly every surface. Within a half an hour, the factory would burn under the heat of Cybertron’s summer sun.

Everything would burn.

But most importantly, the evidence that he had been there would burn.  Only Perceptor would remember him, and even Perceptor had never managed to put a name to his face.

He’d wanted to, though.  The scientist had wanted to see him named.

That was the part that stung, even now.

However, Megatronus did not have any desire to ruminate over that concern.  The timing on these next few steps was crucial if he wanted to leave enough leeway for both himself and the other workers to escape.  Given that it would have to be a particularly deadly alarm to rouse the spark technicians from their seclusion, he didn’t have even a moment to spare considering what might have been.

He needed to pour the nitrate without being caught.

He needed to pour the exact right amount, so that five microcycles later he could be by the door, ready to push the alarm just before the first explosions happened.

He needed to make sure he punched in the right alarm code, so that everyone knew to evacuate immediately instead of trying to investigate.

He needed to grab Perceptor.

At least, with the alarms blaring and mechs scurrying around in a panic, no one considered it strange that he was carrying an unconscious technician.  He didn’t want to look back, and he didn’t want to look down, either. There were too many memories in the factory, and too many memories in the faceplates of the teal-striped mech in his arms.

So long as he left before Perceptor woke, then the technician would not be aware that Megatronus had stolen the oscilloscope.  He’d never learned that Megatronus wanted it, after all...and with a factory burning down around him it would have been all too easy for it to fall off in the chaos.  That had to be true.

It had to be.

Mechs were shouting.  A metal crate spilled, leaving the lifeless skulls of unfinished drones staring out at him.  He was rocked by the sudden, unexpected explosion of the conveyor motor—a whole microclick too early, but all he could do was ignore it and run.

On the assembly line, drones were still calmly working, sorting out good pieces from bad ones while panic settled in around them.

Megatronus shuddered and looked down.

Perceptor looked up.

Startled, Megatronus leapt through the side door, slipping down the back alleys that he’d been planning on taking since he’d known he’d have to blow up the factory…since he’d thought about it being a possibility the first day he’d walked in.  The heat of the afternoon hit him at full blast, warming his plating immediately and making every intake burn. It was too hot to cool his engine, too hot to keep running at top speed, too hot to transform.

He didn’t stop.

“My word,” Perceptor started to say, unfocused and confused…

…Before Megatronus slammed him up against the wall.

Perceptor screamed, then—a sound that even the gladiator, who was used to the sounds of pain, had not been expecting.  It cut him, to hear that scream…

But he’d never fought a friend before.  He’d never needed to hurt someone who had not been attacking him outside of the arena.  He’d never wanted to.

He shouldn’t have been bothered by it, now.

It had been his decision to make Perceptor into his enemy, one way or another, and there was only one possible end for someone who was his enemy.

It made the most sense to kill the technician.

Leaving him alive was folly.  Perceptor was the only one who could identify him at all , name or not.  No one else had been as close to Megatronus as the technician had been.  If he took the scientist out now, he could make sure the body wound up in the factory, make sure that he was never implicated, make sure that no one knew that he had been up to with the drone processors.

He had plans for those processors, still.  

Megatronus wasn’t so naïve to imagine that this factory would not be rebuilt.  He knew it would be.  However, when it was, he’d have the processors finished and snuck into the factory at Altihex.  New drones would not behave the same way that old ones had. New drones would behave however he wanted them to.

Killing Perceptor would make that easy.

It would.  It would.

He would do it.

He raised a fist, letting the technician slump into a pile at his feet.

He let his engine rev, building power.

He readied himself…

And then Perceptor looked up, one last time, and met his optics.

…a propensity for violence and aggression.  

No, you haven’t threatened me.  

I trust you.

Megatronus roared.

He roared, because this should have been easy for him and it wasn’t.

It wasn’t.   It wasn’t.

It was time for him to go.

He turned, and left Perceptor slumped there damaged.

Hurt.

And alive.

Chapter Text

“I can’t remember the last time I was on the surface,” Perceptor said, his voice bouncing off the wide, open walls of the elevator as his face turned to look upwards in anticipation.  “The Core has been my life for so many years, and I am not even a full technician yet.”

In the large, echoing openness of the ascension tunnel, Divide had been listening to Perceptor rambling off and on for cycles.  His chatter broke the silence of the seemingly-endless trip, giving Divide something to focus on beside the fate that they were steadily creaking towards.  

It had not helped.

“Once we have established a drone factory, I should be able to get my final certifications.  I may even be able to continue working above ground, so long as I follow the code. This is not what I expected, of course, but it is a little exciting to be breaking new ground again.  I haven’t had an opportunity like this since I was part of the space bridge team on Luna. I can’t imagine that any of my contacts are still on their old transmission lines, either, but I’ll have to give them a try.  We’re going to need someone to help us get a business started, after all.”

The scientist’s voice continued, catching on the long walls of the vertical shaft and vanishing upward into the near-infinite void.  Divide could feel the faintest breeze brushing through the cracks of his armor and he shivered, already missing the comfortable magnetics of the Core.  

“—and I think he’s working in hydroponics now, attempting to see if alien plant life can survive in Cybertronian soil.  With such an outrageously high metallic content, I told him I did not think he would have much luck, simply because of the acidity so many extra ions.  He said he could balance it by adding an imported sodium bicarbonate, though, and I wonder if he’s had any success—“

Around Divide, the husks of not-yet-activated mechs were swaying, jostled by the rhythmic clanks of the large gears that worked the elevator slowly upward.  Their topcoats were shiny, even in the dim recessed lighting that lined the rim of the lift’s floor. He could hear their engines running in standby mode, waiting for the commands that their first employers or benefactors would give them.

Their optics were dark.

Their sparks were thrumming weakly.

They had no idea what waited in store for them at the top, what perils or joys they might face after they were activated.

Divide did not like that line of thinking, and glanced away.  He’d never gotten to the surface by this route before.

He was having difficulty with how final it felt.

“—but he went with Jetfire to the orbital station, and that was a century-long contract.  Since all of them had moved on, I did not know what to do.  The space bridge project had failed, and my future was open to any number of outcomes.  I suppose that is why I ended up in the Core. The accident on Luna 1 had proven to me that there were still variables which we hadn’t considered, and I believed sparks were one of them.”

Perceptor’s voice finally stopped, cutting off abruptly in the silence.

Worried that something was wrong, Divide looked over.  Perceptor seemed fine on the outside, but his lips were pursed together as if he were considering something new.

Quickly, Divide ran over the past few seconds of conversation, realizing he must have missed something important.

It hadn’t seemed like anything at the time, and Perceptor had always been eager to explain his past in detail…

But never this part of it.

Divide realized he’d never heard anything about a space bridge accident on Luna 1.

“Now we’re going back to the surface,” Perceptor’s voice continued, softer.  “We’re going back, and I’ve learned so much about spark radials from you…but I still have not learned everything.  The Drivers denied my request to finish my spark certifications. They needed us to do this. They needed this so much that they’re sending us away when they have so few technicians to begin with.”

Divide could not stop the shudder from passing through his own frame, remembering the Driver’s pronouncement to his own request.  Their voices still trembled in his armor, in his mind, in the way the light reflected off the walls and vibrated straight down through his struts.  

He’d always hated the way the Drivers spoke, how it felt like an intrusion in his very spark.

He had more of a reason to hate them now than ever.

“This is going to work out though, isn’t it?  Do you think we’ll be able to establish a factory successfully, and begin production on drones?  Do you think they’ll send other spark technicians, and that maybe you and I will be able to go back to what we were doing?  Divide?”

Divide opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

He did not know what to say.

“You haven’t talked to me since we stepped onto the elevator.  You haven’t said a word, you haven’t sung, you have not even tried to harmonize with the frequency of the elevator motor.  I’ve never seen you so quiet. Is everything alright?”

Around them, the lifeless mechs swayed.

Divide’s mouth was still open.

He felt like he could not get enough air in through his intakes.

“I’m not starting a factory with you,” he managed, at last, broaching the topic that he’d wanted to avoid but knew he couldn’t.

Perceptor stared at him for a long moment, taken aback.  Clearly he did not believe his audio receptors, because one of his large, thickly shielded hands went up to the side of his helmet, tapping softly to confirm that they were on.  “You…what?” he asked, confused.

The words continued to stick in Divide’s vocalizer.  He did not want to leave the Core. He hadn’t wanted to leave the Core for a long time.  He had been sure that he would die down there, never having to own up to his past, never having to think about what he’d lost, never having to question that being an Authenticator was where he belonged.

He was sure, until Perceptor had come to him asking about sparks.

“When we reach the surface, I’m going to disappear,” Divide said with a certainty that he did not feel.  “I have no desire to be a spark technician anymore.”

“Can you do that?” the scientist asked, now touching the audial on the other side of his helm.  

The gears continued to creak slowly upwards around them.

“The worst they could do is send another Authenticator after me, and I doubt they have one to spare now.”  The Drivers might have been willing to sacrifice one, but they wouldn’t send a second. There weren’t enough Node operators to go around.  They would continue to have less and less of them, too, if the population continued to decline.

In that respect, he had understood the Drivers’ decision.  They had needed a way to produce mechs faster in order to meet the increased demands from the surface.  

Divide and Perceptor had provided that method to them: a way to make beings which could perform tasks as well as Cybertronians, but needed only half the resources to make.

Now, they were being shipped upward as the Core’s only experts on drones…as Cybertron’s only experts.  Divide was being asked to give up the reason he’d began this research in the first place, to return to the surface, and to begin anew with a drone factory above ground.  He was being asked to go back to the society that he’d rejected for the seclusion of the Core, and to spend the rest of his life building halves of mechs.

This was something that Perceptor would not understand.

“I don’t think I can do this without you, Divide…” the teal-striped scientist began, hesitantly.

“Yes, you can,” he countered, not giving the other time to argue.  “You know everything I know about how to make a spark imprint. You’ve got the connections on the surface to get you started, and you can program a facsimile processor better than anyone I’ve ever met.  You do not need me.”

“But the Drivers do,” Perceptor interjected.  “If not with me, then in the Core. You said yourself there aren’t enough Authenticators anymore.”

“ Then they should have thought about that, ” Divide snapped back, unable to hide his vitriol towards the Drivers’ decision.  “They should have thought about where they needed me the most before sending me on this quick fix for them.  They should have thought about my skills, and my uses, and my desires before damning me to spending the rest of my already shortened life working on mockups !  I could have had my voice back, Perceptor--!”

Immediately, he regretted letting that much slip.

Immediately, he knew it would sound selfish.

It was.

It was selfish.

It was selfish that the only reason he’d gone along with Perceptor’s idea was because he wanted to know how to fix himself.  He wanted to do what even the Drivers had not been able to do, and to know more about sparks than even the Drivers claimed to know.  He’d wanted to know everything.

No.

He’d wanted to know enough to bring back what he had lost.

He’d almost had it.

“But, Divide,” Perceptor said, softly, turning to face him gingerly as if he were a time bomb primed to explode.  “You have a beautiful voice.”

Divide stared.

Of course Perceptor thought that.

Of course he did.

The technician had been to the opera a long time ago, and had heard many of the famous stars perform.  He’d heard them, and he’d seen them, and he was smart enough to pick out a lot of the scientific theories behind the way the opera worked.  Divide’s voice, now, would have sounded more than acceptable to him.

He had not been on stage himself, however.

He hadn’t ever felt the way that frequencies bounced off of every piece of the set, amplifying and dividing and spreading over the theatre until they returned again different.  He’d never known what it was like to hit the perfect pitch in harmony with a partner, synchronized exactly so that an entirely new note was formed.  He’d never been part of choreography so intricate that a single misstep might prove fatal, and success would bring undying fame.

He’d never had that, and then lost it in an instant.

He’d never lost it on his debut night.

“It’s something,” Divide agreed, without any emotion behind the words.  “And it’s something I can’t bear to sacrifice. Not for drones. Not for Drivers.  Not for—“

Divide started to say ‘you,’ and then stopped, his optics meeting Perceptor’s.

Perceptor watched him back.

Divide could not say it.

“I wish you luck,” Perceptor offered, simply, and moved to look at the swaying protoforms, turning his back on Divide.

It was not the best goodbye he could have hoped for.

It also wasn’t the worst.

There was only silence in the elevator, however, without Perceptor’s chatter, and Divide knew it was something he would miss.  

He couldn’t stand the silence.

Silence, and then the sharp clang of the gears, climbing one rung at a time.

Silence, and then noise.

Silence, noise.

With no reservations holding him, Divide began to hum his first new tune.

It was his tune.  Melancholy.  Hopeful. Hopeless.  

It would be his tune, and for now it would be all he had to start with.

He would be a spark technician no more.

Something…had changed.

The communications drone ceased playback, having weeded out the last memory file from Divide while waiting for the other drone to remove the packaging material.  From now on, it would not have to worry about unearthing sudden and unexpected experiences during normal operations, which meant it would only need to access the files when they would be useful to it.  Categorizing them had been pleasing, besides, even if the task had been difficult without the buffer from the transmission tower to assist.

However, the completion of the task was not what had roused the drone from the memory playback.

Only 36% of the way through the protective packaging, it had detected a significant increase in temperature.  After comparing relative indexes between its dual sensor nodes, it was able to conclude that the rise emanated from the leftmost corner of the room.  The data from the other drone it was connected to confirmed these findings.

They were not a concern.  

Not yet.

However, they were worth investigating further.

It could hear conversations through the walls, vibrations that indicated mechs talking at standard patterns and rates.  It could hear the sounds of the machines, relentlessly pounding out its future counterparts. It could even hear, distantly, the rumbles of transports arriving to the bays to pick up cargo and to drop off materials and supplies.  Apart from the rise in temperature, there were no anomalies in factory procedure that it could detect.

This was odd.

Regardless, it increased priority on the task of freeing itself, and delved into its connection with the other drone.

From drone’s processor it was able to utilize the foreign operating systems, allowing it access to the programming and necessary dialog to communicate with unfamiliar appendages.  It could, in essence, instruct the drone’s software to do the work it needed, instead of interfacing directly with the drone’s hardware , which was still alien to it.  It had learned this earlier.

Now, however, it was becoming more pressing to expedite the process.

Unfortunately, this was compounded by the fact that it was unfamiliar with what to direct hands to do, in any more specific way than ‘remove packaging.’  This was also complicated by the fact that the other drone had a processor of its own.

It had, of course, initially plugged in to an offline drone, which meant it had needed to supply enough power to work both systems until it had been able to locate the master control switch.  With only so much power to spare, locating the switch had proven a necessity, and was relatively easy to accomplish.

Dealing with the constant error messages, ‘unauthorized user’ alerts, and restart algorithms that popped up once the other drone had booted up, on the other hand, was hard. After its experience with Divide, the drone had expected that using another drone would be akin to adding a new appendage.  There would be some hardware incompatibility of course, but software could account for that. In Divide, it had not experienced any problems identifying the components of the mech’s processor or determining which systems would be of use and which would not be. The insides of Divide’s head had not been difficult to navigate, and it had felt as if the programs in the composer’s mind were receptive to its commands.

As such, it had not expected this drone’s processor to present any difficulties.  It did not have nearly such sophisticated algorithms as Divide, and it had additionally been designed with modular, cross-compatible parts to make repairs easier.  Drones needed to have similar tertiary spark radials, so they could be mass-produced. This was expected.

Dealing with a drone whose tertiary radials had been altered by experimental programming was not expected, however.  Nothing seemed to be quite as easy as it should have been, and there was not a simple solution that could improve the interface between them as far as the drone could tell.

Thankfully the other drone was more than willing to cooperate, provided that it was addressed with exact and simplified commands.  

It was aware of the communication drone’s intrusion.  It was…confused, in that there were no protocols for how to behave if one found another drone attempting to control one’s processor.  The communications drone believed it would have also been confused had it found itself in a similar situation.

They were both aware of the irony in that.

They were also both aware of the sudden and piercing alarm that sounded out on the factory floor.  

This, finally, was a concern worth noting, and for the moment they turned all 200% of their audial sensors toward picking up on further cues.  

There were fewer voices, now.  Many of the mechs it had detected earlier were gone, and the new ones passing closest to the closet sounded hurried and distressed.  Their speech was too fast. Footfalls were heard running by the door.

There was an explosion.

The communications drone waited 1.68 nanoclicks, and then sampled its surroundings for a second time, noting a temperature increase of over 30 percent.  The environment was changing at a rate of .36 degrees per decicycle, and after a few more samples it came to the alarming conclusion that the room was rapidly becoming hazardously warm.  

It tested a leg.  

Its leg still could not move.

It tested its other leg, and found that one similarly immobile, bound tightly within the insulated packaging material.  This was a concern as it made projections about the increasing peril. There would be approximately 7.6 clicks before the heat would begin interfering with its processes, and it likely had only 3.3 more clicks beyond that before there was potential for physical damage.  Its choices were few.

The other drone seemed to be aware of the increased urgency, but was not able to assist outside of its programming.  Strong, unsteady fingers quickly probed at the communication drone’s casings, pulling at manufactured plastics that yielded but would not snap.  This material was unfamiliar to it. The material was unfamiliar to them both.

This material was…frustrating.

However, it did not have time to process more ‘frustration.’  Neither of them did, and instead they turned their attention to the task at hand.  The communications drone considered the problem. The other drone pulled at the tape.  The temperature increased.

Something new exploded.

Pull.  Strain.  Rip. Each time the hands failed to break through, the elastic constricted around it.  Each time a finger found a satisfactory grip, the elastic snapped. This continued without end, a cycle of panic and relief that the drone was rapidly beginning to detect might be futile.

7.4 clicks had passed, and only 42% of the packaging had been removed.  Its legs were still immobile. It needed other options to pursue.

In front of it, the other drone continued with its mission, continually stretching and tearing what material it could.  The communications drone was connected to it, and could transfer any amount of data through their hardline. It could transmit its entire database, its mission, and its memories to the other drone.

The other drone’s arms and legs were fully functional.  It…could escape.

The communications drone could upload its data, release the other drone, and provide it with orders to continue seeking the Node.  It could…go.

It could go somewhere.  

It could go somewhere, and it would possess the communications drone’s data, but it would not be the communications drone.  It would be a different drone.  It would not be able to return to the tower and pick up where the communications drone had left off.  It would not be able to fulfill the communications drone’s duties. It would not be able to monitor the airwaves, and listen for problematic songs.

It would never learn why the communications drone had made problematic songs to begin with.

The communications drone would also never know.

It would no longer exist.

It…could not hypothesize non-existence.  

Strangely, it was beginning to notice a change in the lighting of the room.  No longer was it solely illuminated by the cool blue glowing of a twin pair of drone visors, but it was blooming in a deep, searing red.  The metal of the walls was heating, and in the northeast corner a glimmer of bright-hot molten slag dripped down onto the crates within.

The other drone continued pulling.

It tugged, harder, aware of danger, aware of its own self-preservation coding warning it to run, aware of the second drone within its mind that countermanded that protocol.  It would complete its mission. The communications drone would leave it no choice but to obey, up until there was no option left. The other drone’s hands were directed to the bound legs, pulling, ripping, and thrashing when their thoughts fell out of synch or when one of them forgot how to operate singular digits.

The fingers snagged.

The other drone pulled, trying to dislodge them, nearly lifting the communications drone off of the ground until the tension grew too great.  The bindings snapped. The suddenly free hand jerked backward, shook once, and then reoriented itself for another attempt. For a moment the communications drone felt the packaging material loosening, but it was not loose enough.  There was still too much to do.

It…acknowledged this.

It acknowledged that the projected timetable for its freedom greatly exceeded the amount of time before the room grew too hot to exist within.

It also acknowledged that if one of the other drone’s hands could lift it briefly, then two hands could pick it up permanently.

Two hands reached out by its command, and did.

This confirmed its hypothesis: They both now had a single pair of working legs.

They both could escape.

It was still bundled in packing tape.  It was still inside of a factory that was burning down.  It was still trapped in an unknown room, but it could escape.

Cradled in the other’s arms, the communications drone commanded them to move.  The first few yards were treacherous, requiring navigation around crates, other drones, and packing supplies.  They jostled a table, and organized data-pads spilled out from carefully arranged cubicles, sliding across the desk and onto the floor.  The working legs stepped on them, broke them, and continued onward.

As the communications drone had hoped, the door to their storage room was not locked.  

As the communications drone had…feared…the rest of the factory was filled with flames.  

Fire was something it was not equipped to handle.  Metal and duracrete did not easily burn, and most mech-made materials avoided combustible properties on purpose.  Heat was a product of reaction, and, around Cybertronians who ingested flammable materials, intense heat was an undesired product of any reaction.  Fire escape protocols were not present in its systems, because the likelihood of it ever encountering a fire was approximately zero.

Thus, when encountering a veritable wall of flames, the communications drone was terrified for the first time that it could recall.

It was an emotion it could register, catalog, and save either for a time when it could fully comprehend it or a time when it would not matter anyway.  That time seemed to be fast-approaching.

There was no way out.

If, it reasoned, the factory was made mostly of metal and duracrete, then whatever had started the fire must have been chemical.  What had continued the fire must have been resultant from the fuels and oils in the machinery, which had been spread when they’d exploded.  Now, the fire raged in all directions, heat melting the walls, charring the duracrete, consuming the wreckage of drones that had not escaped.

It could feel the heat.

For once, however, it had no calculations on what such intensity meant.  It knew…it knew there was no escape for it.  Already its processes were slowing, already it could feel the compounds in its paint breaking down their bonds and peeling away.  In the distance it could see the docks, and the tiny, distorted window of cool greyness that seemed to be beckoning across impossible odds.  From all around, it could hear the crackling of flames.

They were beautiful.  

They…roared, a vacuum of air particles being consumed in the reaction, layering wave after wave of rustling, arrhythmic whispers.  It tilted its head back, and watched the deep reds, bright oranges, harsh yellows and violent whites reflecting off the visor of its companion, locking the vision in memory.

It sampled the sound of the fire.

It did not know that it would ever have a chance to use that sound clip, but it was not going to pass the opportunity up.

The fire was important.

The fire was the one thing between it and its mission.

The fire was the obstacle it had to overcome before it could return to Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, Third Nexus Council.

The fire was as close as it had ever come to death.

Run, it whispered, still connected through its hardline to the other drone.

Acknowledged, the other returned, and ran.

The door was ahead, through walls of fire.  The communications drone estimated that its freedom was approximately five hundred lengths away.  As the temperature increased, it began other calculations, checking the heat of the flames around them to see how long they could last before the flames ate at their metal, how long they could last before their own fuel intakes caught.  

The calculations faded, in the heat.  It tried to restart them, and failed, aware of the dampening effect on electronics, aware that the longer it was in the fire the more permanent its damage would become.

Its vision distorted.

Then, in a lance of pain, it heard the other’s visor crack.  It glanced up, losing sight of the doors for an instant to watch the drone propelling them forward, watching its melting faceplates and the exposed wiring underneath.  The pain…had not been its pain. The distortion in the vision had been the overlay of the drone’s.

Now, it could not see through the other’s optics at all.  It could not guess how long it might be before its own vision deteriorated, or what differing materials the two of them might have been constructed out of.  

It could not guess.  It…could not try to, as the error messages were flooding in.

The drone’s feet were melting.

It stumbled.

The communications drone could not even scream as it felt fire licking at the cable that connected them, pain that was its own sharply emanating from a source that it could not shut down.  It needed this connection. It needed this drone. It needed to live , even if it was certain that the other would die.  It…had no choice.

It had no choice in plunging, fully, into the others systems, repeating sequences that signaled run.  Run.  Left leg extend.  Left leg contact, left ankle compress, left leg propel, left knee compress, left leg extend…Right leg.  

Right leg, error, ankle deterioration, suggest immediate shut down for repairs.

Override.

Left leg, error, ankle deterioration, suggest immediate shut down for repairs.

Override.

Immediate shut down recommended.  Override. Override. Watching the tiny grey square of light grow larger, and larger, and larger, concentrating only on the basic functions that would allow it to survive.  Left leg. Right leg. Override.

Override.

Behind them, there was an explosion…

But he...

He would survive.

Chapter Text

The day was supposed to have been a good day.  

Ratbat knew this because he had been sitting smugly in front of the Senate only cycles before as his proposition had passed, vote by vote.  Although any standing armies—drones or otherwise--were still technically under the jurisdiction of Sentinel Prime, they could not be mobilized without Senate approval.  

The Senate, in effect, now had control.

It was exactly what he’d been waiting for.  This victory put Ratbat in the perfect situation to engineer the downfall of the aging Prime…and from there, to possibly do away with the position in its entirety.  No longer would the military be in control of someone who, at spark, was a religious figure. No longer would armies be at the beck and call of an increasingly unpredictable element.

No longer would Ratbat have to defer to someone else to get things done.

Everything had been falling into place perfectly, except for one thing.

There weren’t going to be any standing armies, because there weren’t going to be any more military drones.

His factory had just burned down.

He’d watched it on the view-screen, stewing frigidly in his chair as it tried to find a comfortable position around his agitated and restless self.  From what he could tell there had not been many casualties, though some mechs were being flown to local hospitals and repair bays, and half-burned drone bodies were littering the streets.  He could likely salvage the parts for those, returning at least some of his investment, but the delay was what currently rankled him. He could not bear the fact that this had come now, of all things.  That this…act of Primus, for lack of a better phrase…would spoil a moment he’d been poised to savor. That this had cost him money, and ruined his day.

He needed to send repair crews immediately, and offer assistance to any nearby factories that had incurred damages.  He needed to address the populace. He needed to make charitable donations and he needed to foot mechanic’s bills for any injured workers.  This event still could be turned to his advantage, and he could still come off as a tragic victim of unfortunate circumstance who, nevertheless, moved quickly to bring care and sympathy to those affected.  He could be almost a hero, provided that the root of this error was not seen as his.

That was where this scenario got tricky.

The factory was, at this point, owned by him.  He had bought greater and greater shares of drone stock until the small business had been virtually handed over to him, and he’d enjoyed plenty of profits from its wares.  It could have easily been stated that he was responsible for the facility and any goings-on within, which meant he needed to find out exactly what said ‘goings-on’ had been.

So what had the news reports said?  A faulty engine had led to explosions?  Faulty engines weren’t inherently a sign of poor planning or misplaced management, which meant he could find some individual to shift the blame onto easily enough.  Perhaps one of the workers had not been performing the necessary maintenance. Ratbat was sure he could have such a scenario proven if he could pay off the right forensics team.

However, he’d need more details, first.  In a worst-case scenario, the root of this might lie with some shoddy piece of machinery that had inadvertently led to an ‘unsafe environment,’ and that rumor would be disastrous in the hands of the right journalists.  So, he needed to make sure he got those journalists the right details.  He needed to know what those details were.  He needed…

Someone logical, who was already on his payroll.

“Put me through to Perceptor,” he murmured to his chair, knowing it would automatically forward the details needed for the connection to his secretary.

“Acknowledged,” Redirect sent back almost instantly, but with less vitality than normal.  Perhaps the mech had been as affected by the destruction today as Ratbat had been. That would certainly explain the amount of time that had already elapsed while waiting for this call to connect, which was increasingly intolerable given his already agitated state.  What was taking so long? Perhaps Redirect was not as efficient as he’d once been. Perhaps Ratbat needed a new secretary. Or…perhaps…this was merely what transmissions had been like before he’d grown used to the speed and efficiency of his Communications Drone. Since Ratbat had gained that acquisition lunar cycles ago, Redirect had not needed to supply him with a connection service.  It was not his job, any longer .  The drone had proven to be much more adept at it, as with many other things.  Drones, it seemed, were the future.

And that future was, currently, a very large conglomeration of twisted wreckage and blackened parts.  

“This is Perceptor,” a weary voice cracked, a small beep indicating a faulty reception even as the holographic communicator pulled the image up, displaying the spark technician and his shiny teal corporate stripes marred with soot.  It was not difficult to tell what was in the background--it was the same view Ratbat had watched on his view-screen all afternoon.

He was already prepared for this.  “I called as soon as I could. It is good to see you safe, Perceptor.  Are you well?”

“As well as can be expected, under the circumstances,” the mech replied, his background changing as he stepped into an alleyway to escape the noise.  “Though I am surprised that you are putting in this call to me; the factory supervisor is also on-site.”  

“The factory supervisor’s office was nowhere near the source of the first explosion—I have been told he was safe, and that he is already preparing a report for me.” If he knew what was best for himself.  “I wanted to speak with someone who was closer to the event. Since you have often spoken of your experience with both the laymen and the technicians, I was hoping that you could direct me to a mech to speak to.”

“Yes, of course.”  Perceptor nodded, perfunctorily.  “You are speaking to him.”

“You were right there, when it happened?” Ratbat had to ask, mildly surprised that Perceptor was in as good of a condition as he was given the state of the rest of his factory.  However, he couldn’t say he was disappointed:  this would make it far easier to get a straight answer right away.  

“I had that unfortunate distinction, yes.  As you know, my duty is to act as a go-between, and at the time I was.  Ah. ‘Going Between.’” There was the briefest pause, in which the mech took in a vent full of fresh air.  “It has been a long day, Senator.”

It most certainly had been a long day.  “Can you tell me what happened?”

Perceptor’s lips pursed.  “Yes, I could perform that function.”  

“Will you?”

“I...”  The mech exhaled, and sagged against the wall.  One hand rubbed at the back of his helm, as if trying to jog his memory.  “I am sorry, Senator…but I am not sure I could .  I was nearly put offline merely a few cycles ago.  Mechs who were close to me are badly burned. My processor has been running at peak capacity, trying to salvage months of work and theories and formulas that that it may not be able to, and the entirety of my life is downloaded onto one, small data-pad that I happened to be holding when I was taken from the premises.  At this point, Senator…” He shook his head. “I am not even certain who I am , anymore.  I do not know that I could accurately tell you what went wrong.”  

“I am aware that your duress might make your current statements invalid.”  Ratbat continued, softer, as patiently as he could manage given his own stress. “I intend to hire a research team to fully investigate whatever…folly…might have perpetrated our unfortunate circumstances.”  He did not even have to embellish on ‘our-’ at this point, he felt impacted enough to share the misfortune. “They should be able to collect any later information you could give them. My only concern, of course, was the prevention of this catastrophe at any of our other factories.  You…do not think that the employees elsewhere might be in danger, do you?”

Perceptor ceased fidgeting, and he knew his words had impacted as per his intent.  Ratbat could see the look of worry that crossed over the scientist’s features, the quiet consideration, and finally a slow shake of his head.  “No, Senator. I believe that your other factories are safe. They are not drone factories, and…it is my suspicion that only the drones are being targeted.”  

That drew Ratbat into a screeching halt.  “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“The drones.  They…at least, I think it is only the drones…were what he was after.  I do not believe that he would target your other facilities unless they were drone related.”

They were what ‘he’ was after?  “ Who was after the drones?”

Perceptor stared, obviously not expecting this sudden intensity from Ratbat.  Ratbat had not been expecting this sudden intensity from himself, either, but he had been caught off-guard. Something, or…someone had caused this?  Somebody had attacked Ratbat’s holdings?  Somebody had dared?

“If he had a name, I did not get it.  I am sorry.” Perceptor finally dropped his gaze, looking at the hand that had been rubbing his helm a moment before, the data-pad that allowed them communication still gripped tightly in the other.  “He had been working in the factory for some time. I believe he was a spy.”

A spy.  A spy that he, Ratbat, had not known about?  What sort of informants was he paying these days?  His factories and headquarters had always undergone rigorous employment requirements, screening everyone.  There were, of course, the odd mechs who made it into his staff, but he was aware of them at least, and could use them against his opponents the same way his opponents made use of some of his spies.  That was how the game was played .  Sometimes someone got through, and you rolled your windows down in honor of a well-played hand, even if it stung.  They were spies.

They weren’t supposed to burn down your factories.

Not without one of his adversaries issuing some sort of ultimatum first.

“Did you have any suspicion of him?”  Ratbat continued, still feeling slightly dazed.

“Er, yes.”  The teal mech responded.

“And…when did that begin?”

“At about the point when he punched me.  I am sorry to say, but I did not learn about your drone until after I had already left the building, and by then it was too late.”  

Ratbat felt as if someone had slipped a low-grade fuel additive into his supplements.  “My what.”

“Your drone, sir.  The one that I designed for you that was in storage at the time.  I had been busy with other tasks, but it was scheduled to be maintenanced before your vote, as you had requested…”

His communications drone.  It…had still been at the factory?  “That drone was supposed to have been returned to me by now…”  Ratbat stated, feeling like he couldn’t get enough air into his engines to keep them cool enough.  He’d lost his factory and his drone?  How had this come to be?  Who would have been so brash as to attack him out in the open like this, and on the same day as the vote?  It wasn’t unheard of, but it really just wasn’t done.   There were better ways…more…elegant ways!  Instead, someone was ruthlessly targeting him, and the horrible truth of the matter was that he wasn’t even certain who .  No one behaved like this: it had no class.  He and his colleagues might starve out a business here or there, or call in Security raids when they knew an adversary might be making an illegal shipment, but one did not simply blow them up.

One did not.

Nor did one remove them of their prize communications drone.  “Do you…believe that you could duplicate the procedure used to make my drone?”

“Given time and a new facility, it should still be possible to do.  But I am not certain of anything at this moment. I do not even know how to locate my own apartment, and I am hardly the only one of the spark technicians with this problem.  We are out of our element on the surface, Senator.”

“Of course.  I will have crews sent in immediately to assist you.”  It was the right thing to say, and it was the only thing he could really offer.  Without the technicians, no number of rebuilt factories would be able to produce any drones.  It seemed that the army Sentinel Prime had commissioned was going to have to wait.

“Thank you, Senator.  I am most sincerely sorry to be contacting you under the blanket of such news.  I’d…hoped to have happier things to talk about. We’d been monitoring the error in your serving drone, and I was hoping to fix the coding…”  Perceptor seemed to be honestly trying to deliver good news, and the naked sincerity of it struck Ratbat. It was hard to tell, despite being used to lies, what was real and what was coming from the stress.

“I applaud your efforts.  When we resume operations, I am sure our future line of drones will be even grander than the ones we had produced before today.   If nothing else, at least I will be able to provide facilities and secure jobs for you and your colleagues until our factory is running again.”    He was, in essence, going to have spies of his own in the new factory that Decimus and Optarus were building.

“I believe the gesture will be well-received, Senator.  Many of us are worried about our future…” The teal hand dropped to the technician’s side, helpless.  “Many of us will need time to adjust to the loss of our work.”

“Take all the time you need.  I will send the investigation team immediately so that we can begin cleanup, and so that your lives can return to the track they glide most smoothly on.”  He dipped his head. “One last thing, before I go, Perceptor?”

The fingers on the data-pad tightened, until Ratbat could see the tips of them around the screen “Ah, yes?”  

“Please forward me all information that you can about the spy.  If we act quickly, we may be able to detain him for his crimes.”

“I…”  Perceptor began, and Ratbat focused on that hesitation, wondering.  “Of course, Senator. I’ll upload it now.”

“Excellent.  Be well, and please do convey my sincerest sympathies to your team.”  He waited for Perceptor’s download to complete, and ended the transmission.

There was too much to consider.  

There was too much to be done.

Ratbat, for the first time in millennia, felt tired.  

He’d done this before.  He’d given the same speech before, enticed the same information out of the same mechs.  He’d maneuvered, and pushed, and pulled, and bit until he’d come out on top.

And now, someone had blown up his factory.  He couldn’t get over it, because every time he thought on what to do next, he’d come back to the fact that his communications drone was gone and someone had blown up his factory.  

At least, in that, he had some motivation.  Tiredness or not, he’d see this through. Opening his own personal data-pad, he started uploading instructions to send out to Redirect, authorizing withdrawals for the expenditures that needed to be taken care of now.  

Cleanup.  Investigations.  Shuttles for the workers to return them home.

He’d have to sort through the information from his communications drone left in his tower, and he’d need to hire someone to do its job for the time being and get them to look up this spy.

Clicking on the upload, a small, holographic representation of the mech in question appeared, assimilated from information that Perceptor had provided.  The slightest flicker of recognition blossomed in the back of Ratbat’s mind, and stayed there, glowing softly.

He’d seen this mech, this infiltrator, somewhere before…

And that, he knew, would be the key.

“One more thing, Redirect,” he added, appending a final item to the list, “Look up the top contending gladiators .”

“Yes, sir,” his secretary responded, and cut the line.

Chapter Text

It had been dark.

It had been dark for 5.23 cycles, the last light vanishing when the door on the cargo pod was sealed.  He had felt it jostle, once, as magnetic seals latched it to a carrier, and he had noted the increase in pressure as they had taken off.  Around him, steel netting held towering boxes gently in place.

He could no longer see them, but he felt them swaying slowly when the transport swerved, heard the contents shifting with a rustle.  There was some distant knowledge that the crates might fall, that they were heavy enough to crush him and the other drone in their narrow hiding space, but in the darkness he could not anticipate the likelihood of that.  

He had not seen enough of their surroundings to anticipate anything.  5.26 cycles ago, they had crawled into a pod at an active loading dock.  He had known they would be safe in there, and that the loading dock would transport them somewhere that was in no danger of being on fire.

At the time, that was all that had mattered.  

Now, he did not know what to do.  He could not read the markings on the sides of the boxes.  He could not establish a connection to orbiting satellites or local towers through the heavily shielded hull.  He could not calculate a possible flight path. They were moving. It was dark. His drone was dying.

That was all he knew.

Restlessly, his cable curled around the charred body wedged beside him, feeling an exterior that was brittle from heat, warped, and painful to touch.  The error messages coming from it had not ceased no matter how often he overrode them--errors from overblown circuitry, errors from joints soldered shut, errors from sensitive connection jacks that had been calibrated for the finest voltage shifts, whose ends had fused.  He could not disconnect. He could not get his cable loose.

He could not move.

Another system shorted and he felt the drone twitch, shuddering as one of its primary control relays malfunctioned.  There were sparks, tiny pricks that burned onto his visor in the darkness. He shied away from them, haunted by flame.  

They sputtered, and went out.

There was no pain here, in the silence.  The fire had burned through any systems capable of feeling it over 5.6 cycles ago.  The fire had burned through everything.

The fire was burning, even now, in the back of his processor. The images repeated for him over and over again, bringing awareness of how simple it could be to not exist.  He could have given up. He could have made the wrong decision. He could have taken too long to decide.

He could have stayed trapped in the closet, waiting with the other drones until they’d died.

He hadn’t done that.  

Instead, he had survived.  

They both had.

We are safe, now , he transmitted across the half-burnt cable, a tentative statement ghosting carefully through blown transistors.  

I know , was the tired reply.  The communications drone could feel the other shifting next to him, the bare, boiled metal of its legs scraping across the floor, a dozen error messages resurfacing.  He overrode them, one by one. There was nothing the other drone could feel anymore regardless. There was no position it could shift to that would change its fate.

The communications drone still did not know what to do.  

With no other options present, he defaulted to that which he did best.  Although it was a small one, he was connected to a system, and that system contained data that might be of importance.  Quietly, he started sorting through its cache, looking for anything useful that he could save. He marked off recent memories for download, searching for valuable intelligence, private data-codes, and names.  He searched for music to add to Divide’s database.

Sadly, it was a drone.  

It was a standard drone.

It did not possess many items of interest at all.  It had lived a short life in the factory. It had malfunctioned after a data wipe.  It had been given to a laborer for tests. It had listened to the beat of the factory, day after day, and it had listened to the tiny radio the laborer had played.  

This, at least, was of some fascination.

The Communications Drone recognized the music.

The song had been one that he had created before his memory wipe.  In the memory, the song was playing on a small, run-down portable music device.  The laborer was not watching the drone, but the drone found the sounds coming from the device to be pleasant and went to take a step forward.

Hearing this, the laborer turned around.

The drone froze in place.

Looking it up and down, the laborer’s optics locked onto the new position of the drone’s feet and watched them for a moment as if confirming that they’d moved.  Then, his bright blue optics glanced up to the drone’s facemask.

“Come here,” he spoke, and outside of the memory the Communications Drone shuddered.  There was something incorrect about that voice, some aspect of it which reminded him of the fire.  The communications drone did not recognize what was bothering him outright, but he did recognize that if he’d been back in the transmission tower, he would have flagged the sound of that voice as ‘important.’

It required investigating.

Within the memory, the drone moved forward to comply.  The laborer had gestured to a spot next to himself, and it settled there and waited to see what the mech would want it to do next.

However, the laborer did not seem to have a specific task in mind.  Instead, he simply gestured at the radio.

“If you want to listen to something else, rotate the dial on the side.”

This, the drone knew, was a test.

The laborer had often given it tests since installing its new processor.

They were incredibly difficult tests.  Often, the laborer would ask it to make a choice between two scenarios without prefacing the choice with any command or personal desire.  Without any factors distinguishing one choice as being the correct or preferred choice, the drone had needed to rely on its own compulsions.  Sometimes it would be asked which color it liked. Other times, it would be asked if it would rather stand or sit.

After each choice, the teal-striped scientist would come and take more readings.

However, the scientist was not here, and the laborer had already gone back to working at his console.  Right now, it was completely at its own discretion whether it wanted the radio to play this song or not.

It reached out and began to change the station, moving through a very narrow range of options as it did and listening to a small sampling of each piece of music that was broadcast.

Eventually, it settled back onto the first song.

This one was the one that it preferred.

“I hadn’t considered asking it for its musical tastes,” a voice behind the drone began.  Without turning, both the drone in the memory and the Communications Drone outside of the memory knew the voice belonged to Perceptor.  This likely meant more tests were about to begin.

“I’m surprised you haven’t,” the laborer replied, not even looking up from his work.

Again, the sound of the laborer’s voice set off a warning within the communications drone’s processor.  However, there was nothing to do but listen and see if the memory provided any clue. It was getting used to digging through memories by now.

Moving around the side of the drone, the teal-striped scientist appeared within its vision, the box-shaped oscilloscope strapped to his arm.  The drone looked at the scientist, standing still so that he could take the diagnostics that he always wanted to take.

This time, the scientist frowned.

“It must like the song, because I’m not getting a good read on its spark while the music is playing.  There are too many fluctuations, which either means that the radials are exceeding their parameters or that my oscilloscope isn’t working.”

“So turn the radio off and try again,” the laborer grumbled, his large shoulders rising and falling in an emotional display that the drone did not recognize.  

“I will.  It would be a shame if the oscilloscope was broken, after all.” The scientist lowered his arm, reaching forward to flick one of the manual switches on the musical device.  “I won’t be able to make another one very easily, and it could mean that the readings I took from your spark were inaccurate—“

This time, the laborer’s shoulders froze in a manner that even the drone recognized as bad news.

“I refuse to let you read my spark again, Technician, even if your device is malfunctioning.”

“Of…of course,” the scientist replied, looking back down at the oscilloscope.  “I’m sure it was just the effect from the song, besides…”

The teal-striped scientist continued speaking, but something was wrong with the memory.

The sound had cut out.

Concerned by the sudden degradation of the file, the communications drone began downloading other memories from the drone, pushing the data through their charred connection as fast as he could.  

The other drone was losing power.

An entirely new set of errors were slowly flooding in.

He dismissed them and attempted to supply some of his own energy to the drone, but his already-strained cable could not handle the additional load.

Unable to disconnect, he listened to the constant noise that now comprised most of the remaining memories, sorting through them for any hope of content.  

The drone twitched, once.

Its communications protocols failed, a moment later, and the line went silent.  

He had gotten all the memories that he was going to get.

There was no option to override.

He could do nothing but wait, now, curling around his only companion as it shut down bit by bit, observing every passing function, every piece that died and how it cascaded through the systems around it.  He wondered what it meant, to lose all operations. He wondered how far gone a drone could be, before it could not be repaired.

Its spark went out 1.26 cycles later, and he knew he need not wonder about this drone, any more.  

It had survived, for a time.

Now, all of its relevant data belonged to the communications drone, instead.  He could spend the remaining time in the pod sorting through the memories he had sampled from it, and learning more about the laborer and the teal-striped scientist.

Perceptor.

There could be no coincidence that that particular technician was featured in every memory he’d downloaded.

He would have much to ask Perceptor when they finally were able to meet.

“Primus,” a soft voice spoke into the pod, and the Communications Drone’s plans cut off unfinished in his head.  There was a mech above him, peering over the netted cargo he’d collapsed behind with his drone.

He had been found.

He did not recall when the pod had even been set down, which was unacceptable.  His systems were too damaged, and he had been distracted by the data from the drone.

He did not know what would happen now.

His drone was dead.  There were no legs to run with, no arms to lift him.  He had no voice. His connection cable had been seared, raw, and stuck fast to the carapace that pinned it.  He could do nothing but stare and hope that this mech meant him no harm.

The mech was staring back.

Unfamiliar blue optics darted up and down his frame and then vanished, slipping around the large boxes that he and the other drone had wedged themselves between.   A moment later they reappeared again closer, looming over the communications drone accompanied by an expression that he did not recognize. The optics sought for his, found none, and lingered on the cracked visor instead.  Then, they looked away.

“You’re hurt.”

Uncertain if he should respond, the communications drone remained completely still.  The phrase had not been worded as a question or an order. He did not know how to react.

When the mech reached a blue hand toward him, however, he flinched.  His cable was trapped. His arms were still bound to him. His legs were pinned under the drone.  

He had no course for escape.  

The hand slowed.  Then it paused. Then, it changed direction.  Instead of reaching for the communications drone, it reached toward his wrappings.  It pulled for a moment, trying to work them free and instead finding them still sealed tight, shrunken by the intensity of the earlier heat.  The mech’s lips pursed, his footing unstable in the narrow gap of boxes as he looked at the melted packaging, and finally reached out to slowly untwist the knotted ties.

The communications drone did not flinch this time.  

This was behavior he was unaccustomed to.  His interactions with mechs beyond Sentator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, Third Nexus Council, were extremely limited.  He did not know how to proceed.

“I am here to help,” the voice promised, softly.  “I can get you repaired, and I can find out where you are supposed to be.”  Another knot unwound, and he felt the drone’s form fall away from him, sticky threads stretching between where molten packaging had clung to armor gaps.  Still, he did not move. The mech had promised to take him where he was supposed to be.

The communications drone did not know where that was right now.

He had not been able to finish the task that he had left for.  He had not gotten in touch with Perceptor, he had not found a way down to the Node at the Core, and he had not been able to download the origination codes needed to finish Divide’s database.  If he were taken back to Ratbat Towers, there would no longer be a chance to complete any of that. His memory would be wiped.

If he remained at large, however, he still had the opportunity to locate Perceptor.  It was likely that the scientist had not been killed in the fire, as there had been plenty of time beforehand to escape.  Given access to any communications device, he was certain that the technician could be found.

In order to do that, he would need this mech to cooperate.

That…was already what seemed to be happening.

This mech had not given a single order.  He did not ask questions. He…helped.

Slowly, he was even able to lift the communications drone free.  

For the first time since he woke up in the factory, the drone’s legs dangled, unbound.  His feet brushed the large boxes in the narrow pathway. His arms could move. He tilted his screen slowly, looking at the other drone one last time, able to identify its torso only through the cable that still connected them.  Its helm was an unrecognizable mass.

At the movement, the other mech tried to smile.  “You’re not offline. That’s a good start.” The Communications Drone did not detect happiness in his voice, despite the smile.  Looking back at the other drone, he believed that he knew why.

He did not know who this mech was.  He did not understand why he was being helped without an order being given.  He did not know how to respond. He did not know if he was supposed to.

However, he was still bound to the other drone by his cable.  Glancing to that, he looked back to the new mech pointedly. There was a nod, before one strong hand grasped onto his cable, lightly, and pulled it loose.  

Wordlessly, the Communications Drone screamed.

His spinal struts arched, unable to cope with the sudden influx of pain.  Systems that he’d thought defunct or overheated primed to life, assessing damages, sampling inputs, loading data upon data that confirmed his status as ‘alive’ and more than able to still feel.  He had been wrong, earlier, about the pain. That hadn’t been his sensory systems that’d been burnt out.

Now, his cable suspended from him unfettered, shooting agonizing waves of input through his frame.  Distantly, he felt the other wind the limp cable gently around his sleek red arm. He realized that they were moving, realized that he was still being carried, and could see the darkness of the pod retreating as they stepped into a blindingly lit bay.  They were moving quickly. He did not understand where.

“You’re going to be alright,” the voice assured him, the mech’s footsteps falling on resounding marble floors.  Slowly, his senses were returning to him. Slowly, the crackling static from his cable could begin to be ignored.  

They were passing through an archway, back into the dark.  He caught sight of it briefly, snapping images of worn symbols pressed in burnished metal, silhouettes of ancient figureheads imprinted on grey-lit domes.  This was not the tower. This mech did not belong to Senator Ratbat.

They were somewhere else.

They were somewhere quiet.

His optical sensors adjusted slowly to the interior, making out rows and rows of short hallways that each seemed to be sectioned off.  Stacks of datapads were shelved neatly in some, their power lights blinking blue, green, and red. Other hallways seemed empty but for screens on their walls, with command consoles worked flat for easy access underneath them.

The building construction was opulent, but it was also old.   Nearly every hallway was empty, and there was metallic dust glinting on the shelves.  The mech’s footsteps echoed loudly on what sounded like expensive marble, but with enough cracks to make the echoes fuzzy.

The communications drone was glad that his audials could still pick that detail up.  

“Did you find another stray, Orion?” A voice asked, and the footsteps slowed.

“No, sir,” the red and blue mech replied, turning to face the hallway that the voice was coming from.

“Well, it doesn’t look like a statue of Nominus Prime to me.  Wasn’t that supposed to arrive today? Or did we receive that shipment yesterday…”

“Er…no, sir,” Orion stated.  “The shipment just arrived, and the statue is intact.  The pod is still up on the loading dock, but I thought you’d want to see this first.”

“I’m sure I do,” the voice replied, moving closer from the dim lighting in the short hallway until the Communications Drone could finally make out the speaker’s features.  “What is it?”

“I know it’s a little hard to tell because of how he’s damaged, but he’s a drone.  I found him on the transport pod along with another drone—both badly burnt. He’s still alive, though, and I think we might be able to save him.”  Orion did not move, letting the other mech come close to examine him.

Having little choice in the matter the communications drone remained still, and performed his own examination.  The voice had been deceptive, making the second mech out to be much younger than he clearly was. The drone had not seen armor designs like these in any other media than historical documentaries, and facial decorations mimicking beards and mustaches had gone out of style when the alien homeworld of Dreem had taken an economic downturn.  The only aspect that seemed modern about the new mech was his color scheme, and that was only because he recognized that color of magenta as one which Ratbat particularly liked.

“Now why would a burnt drone be on a cargo pod?” the old mech wondered aloud, and the communications drone appended one additional similarity to Ratbat with this mech:  He had ways of asking questions that he already knew the answer to.

“It has been on the news-vids all day.  There was a fire in the machinist district of Kaon, where a drone factory blew up.  I think the cargo pod must have stopped in that district at some point.”

“We’ll just have to find out, won’t we?” the magenta mech smiled.  “But we won’t have much luck asking our new friend here if he dies on us.  Take him to the first aid station and do what you can for him.”

Orion looked off, shifting the communication drone’s weight uncertainly.  He tried not to protest, but he could feel the paint flaking off where it rubbed against the other’s arms—dark blue against bright red.  “I’ll do what I can, but we’d be better off with a drone technician…”

“With that factory in flames I doubt the technicians have anyone to spare right now.  I’ll contact them later if we need, but for now I’m going to get someone to offload our statue before the transport driver wonders where you’ve gone.”

“Of course, sir,” Orion agreed, and turned to move on, leaving the old mech behind in the dark and musty hallways.

This was not where he’d intended to end up, of course, but this was something he’d be able to use.  Orion would fix him, he would find a way to access this building’s transmission tower, and he’d get moving forward in solving the mystery that was still motivating him.  Once he’d solved Divide’s database, he’d be able to do as Orion had promised: He’d be able to return to where he was supposed to be.

He was still alive, and that was the important part.  

He was a drone.

And he was alive.

Chapter Text

It felt like a celebration.  

There was cheering everywhere, ecstatic audial-piercing whistles and engines revving, horns that blared across the endless expanse of silver sand. The sounds were barely distinguishable, a vast sea of noises roaring at unmediated decibels, cresting with the occasional high-pitched scream of frenzied excitement.  

This was his home.

Tonight it was decorated in flame.  Cold fire was in front of him, washing pleasing patterns of blue light over his opponent’s corner of the field like waves.  Hot fire waited at his back, restless, crackling, sending flashes of red lightning to lick at the purple line dividing his half from his adversary’s.  Fire marked the edges of his playing field, reflecting brightly off the silver sands, causing the crowds to draw nearer to the edges in hope of gleaning some warmth from the cold illusions.

Megatronus knew the fire well, the way it kindled inside of him and gave him power, urging him toward his opponent.  He was already focused on the shadow of the other mech, far away, tucked in the distant starting pit, pacing, his keepers running a flurry of final checks around him.  The veteran looked up, and pale yellow optics met Megatronus’s dark blue ones, tiny pinpricks of light conveying their intent across the distance.

Titan had come to win.

The odds were in his favor tonight despite Megatronus’s long history in the gladiator ring.  Titan was a legend in his own right—the scourge of Mesopos, the demolisher of the Sylvius Swarm, the last great giant of Altihex.

Megatronus had seen him in the metal only once, but that had been enough to assess his impressive build.  He was from a size class that was becoming only memory, lost to obsolescence, fading into history as fewer and fewer remained who could afford enough energon to sustain their mass.   After the first depression hit, he remembered seeing the bulky wrecks of them, laying on the roadside or shelved to the edges of the mines. They’d been the most advanced equipment of their time.

But now…

Now they’d been replaced. He’d seen those same hydraulic pistons on Rumble.  He’d seen Frenzy’s tiny but efficient drills. He’d seen the pair of them crack a rock a hundred times their side, and scamper to the side before it fell.

It was not hard to imagine the size of rock that Titan could demolish.  

In Megatronus’s most distant memory of the mines he’d seen their kind, floating from asteroid to asteroid and pulverizing solid stone to minerals and dust. It had been half a millennium ago.  Only a survivor could have lasted this long.

Titan had survived .  

Megatronus had survived, too.

It was something to be proud of.  

Before Perceptor…before working at the factory, before seeing the way that mechs lived on the surface, he’d believed that mere survival was enough.  He’d taken lives, and made the choice to take those lives lest he be killed instead.  He’d formed a team, with Clench. He’d found mechs worth protecting, worth training, and worth standing beside.  He’d come to love his city. He’d come to love these crowds.

He’d come to believe that these were things worth fighting for.

Tonight, he would fight for them in more ways than one.  It was a thought that made him smile, as he formed and flexed a fist.

“Stop movin’ around, ya clanker!”  A voice protested from his shoulder, and instantly he stilled, reminded of the small form clinging to his exoplating, stretching its arm toward his right pauldron.  “I’m almost done.”

A thick line appeared, matte black over gleaming silver shoulder panels, straight as a razor’s edge until it bent at a 90 degree angle.  Another line was brushed beside it, delicate, thin, symbolic, retracing the steps of the first like circuits burning paths through silicone, coiled and efficient, no space wasted as Rumble touched up his gladiator marks.  When he could pull his mind away from the distraction of the coming fight, it was mesmerizing to behold.

Moving his head carefully, Megatronus watched the small mech drawing the line of paint up to the tip of his crest.  Rumble balanced like an expert, bracing himself against joints in Megatronus’s newly polished armor, standing just long enough to finish his work before moving to the next piece.  It was not Megatronus’s imagination that his companion seemed agitated by his restlessness: a single wrong move could crush a tiny servo and put Rumble in the infirmary for cycles.

Thankfully, that had only happened once.

“You used ta be still as a pipe,” the aggravated artist growled at him.

“And you used to have this finished long before the warning bell,” Megatronus smirked down in return, well aware of the diminishing time left before the match.  “It seems like we’re both off our game, tonight.”

“That’s not allowed,” a new voice grumbled behind him, and Megatronus felt the presence that stepped onto the sand, heard the tell-tale squeak of old knee joints.  A heavy hand fell on his arm to turn him, and stopped, shifting instead to use him as support. “With as long as you’ve been out of the ring, even one slip-up means you’ll be dead.”

“Tell ‘im somethin he ain’t already familiar wit, Clench.”  Rumble stuck his small tongue out at the old mech and blew a blast of air onto the drying paint to expedite the process.  “Or at least tell ‘im something dat’ll make ‘im win?” Apparently satisfied with his handiwork, the little mech jumped down, landing in the sand with a flurry of silvery particles. “Frenzy and me, we’ll be in da normal spot, still cheerin’ for yous.  Don’t disappoint us!”

“I’ll try not to fling anything in your direction,” Megatronus winked.  

“Nothin’ that ain’t valuable, at least!” Rumble laughed, and dodged a kick from Clench before he ran off, back toward the stands.  Megatronus watched him depart, slowly moving every joint to test Hook’s upgrades, glancing out toward the countdown screen.

His motion was sleek. There was no dirt in his gears.  There was no stiffness.

After nearly a stellar cycle spent in a worker’s body, he was back in his favorite form.

“Security is here,” Clench warned, reaching out to assist with his pre-fight tests.

Megatronus froze, hoping that Clench was speaking in some sort of code.  “Security?”

Brown fingers tightened on his arms, and Clench’s helm cocked towards the back entrance.  “Enforcers. Outside. They’re asking for you.”

“They’re here?  At the arena?”  It was redundant to ask given that Clench had already spelled it out for him, but he found himself repeating the words nevertheless.  Of course Enforcers would come here if they needed to speak with him.  Non-sponsored gladiators went through great pains not to leave a data-trail when purchasing their dwellings, which meant the only way to know their location was to follow the matches.  Clench had taught him this when they’d moved, to minimize the risk of much-more-lucrative teams getting an edge through sabotage or espionage and also to keep away particularly relentless fans.  The fact that it kept Enforcers from knowing where a gladiator was living at any given point had always been an extra benefit.

However, right now, Security should not have been looking for him at all.  He had covered his trail well at the factory, leaving no personal belongings behind that could be found even if they managed to survive the explosion.  None of the workers—including Perceptor—had ever been given his name.  He’d even been careful with the way his mining treads had been constructed, so that nobody would suspect he had weapons-capable upgrades underneath.

The only solid evidence that existed from his time at the factory had been the spark reading which Perceptor had made, but the scientist could not have tracked him down with that, could he?

“They’re waiting just outside.”  Clench flexed Megatronus’s arm for him, feeling for resistance and going through the motions of a pre-fight checkup as if nothing was wrong. “This is still private property, so they can’t come in without buying a ticket…but once the match is done, the gates are open to anyone.  Our best chance is to sneak you out now.”

“No,” Megatronus grumbled, trying to collect his thoughts.  However the Security forces had come to find him, they were here now.  They were a very real threat, one that did not often visit the Underground but one that did not leave empty-handed when they did.  Megatronus could not recall the ident code of a single mech who had returned once the Enforcers had carried them away. “If I run, they won’t stop chasing me.  It would be proving that I’m guilty.”

“You are guilty,” Clench chastised, rotating Megatronus’s arm a little further than was comfortable to make his point.  

Megatronus did not flinch. “They can’t know that.”  He shook his head, not wanting to stop now, trying to plan a way to leave without being captured, trying to think of a way to get what he’d come for tonight without being taken away.  

There weren’t many options.

“They don’t have to.”  There was a snort of derision from his trainer, who switched his grip to Megatronus’s other arm. “They don’t have to take you in for questioning, they don’t have to examine evidence, and they don’t have to investigate.  All they have to do is have one primary rank slagger who says that you were there, and they’ve got you.” Clench pulled at him, hands that had known strength and victory tugging until Megatronus turned around to face him.  “Is that something they have?”

Megatronus did not want to answer that.  

He didn’t need to.  Clench would not have asked the question if he didn’t already know about Perceptor, and Megatronus’s silence was confirmation enough.  

The old mech cursed.  “Look, your time is running out.  There’s less than a click left on the clock, which means if I’m going to get you out we have to go now.”  

“No.”  Despite what Clench was saying, Megatronus stood firm.

“Why in the pit not? ”  Exasperated, the trainer dropped the arm he had been working on, smudging the paint that Rumble had so carefully applied.  Megatronus could hear the worry in his vocoder, could see the way that his optics kept darting to the back entrance and the field, checking the time on the status board.

Clench’s hands balled into fists, and Megatronus found himself finally looking at them, staring down at the patches of brown eating at armor that had once been bright green.  He didn’t remember Clench being this rusty. This old. This concerned about a mech that he was sending out to die. When had Clench started to care?

When had Megatronus?

He did not have an easy answer, so he shook his head.  “I won’t leave.”

Clench punched him.

His head turned to the side, moving with the blow.  Distantly, Megatronus could see the countdown on the center screen, large numbers ticking off the microcliks to the match.  The blue of Titan’s corner shifted softly, brightening, dimming, undulating as the giant mech stirred up the silver sands and paced, more fluid than anything his size should be.

Megatronus did not want to stop this fight before it began.  

He’d been waiting too long for it.

“If I leave, then I lose my only chance to talk with anyone from Altihex,” he spoke, softly but serious.  “We won’t be able to take a public transport over there if we are fugitives, we won’t be able to afford a private lift, and we won’t be able to find anywhere to stay.  We’ll be on the run. The drone factory will be rebuilt, and everything that I have done…everything that I am about to sacrifice will be in ruins.”

“And if you stay?”  Clench hissed, not convinced but still standing by him…still waiting with him until the final bell, as he always had.

It was an act that Megatronus had taken for granted until now.

Now, he finally understood.

He knew why he was doing this, and he knew why it was going to work.

“If I stay…then they’ll arrest me.”  He smirked, not having to look directly at Clench to know that the old mech was not nearly as amused as he was.  “I’ll use the fact that they don’t investigate against them—because they’ll have me. They’ll think they’ve captured a terrorist, and they won’t look any further than that.  They won’t know that you’ll have passed my work onto somebody in Altihex, they won’t know that the drone factory is going to be rebuilt to make drones with faulty processors.”  Megatronus’s own fist clenched as he looked out to the arena—the site of every battle he had ever faced. “I’ll have won. ”

This could be a victory for him tonight, regardless of how the match went.

“They’ll kill you, Megatronus,” Clench warned, but with a voice that seemed resigned to his decision.

“Only if Titan doesn’t kill me first,” Megatronus laughed, wondering why he did not feel fear at the prospect.  

It would not be a bad way to die.

Clench snorted however, clearly not sharing the sentiment, his own optics glued on the final micro-clicks counting down on the arena scoreboard. “If you let that energon guzzler steal all the money that I bet on you today, then Security will be the least of your worries.”  He pushed at Megatronus and headed for the edge of the starting pit, still limping as he shuffled through the sand.

It was time.

“You just be sure that no matter what else happens, you make that contact with Altihex.  Get them the master chip and the oscilloscope,” he reminded his trainer, knowing he would have enough work to do on the field convincing Titan of his plan.

“Don’t make it sound so easy, gladiator,” Clench grumbled, but softly, and stepped back.

There were no other options left.

Megatronus sucked in a breath.  The clock flipped down to zero.

“It won’t be,” he smiled, and hunkered into his starting position. “That’s why it’s worth it.”

Megatronus charged.

Everything went quiet for a moment, save for the drumming, rhythmic pounding of his feet.  He knew this battle. He wanted it.

He craved it.

It was where he belonged, no matter what happened outside.  This would be his last fight, and it would be a fight that no one would forget.

He slammed into Titan in the dead center of the ring, their weaponry ringing out in a ferocious clang, shoulder to shoulder, his sword flashing red fire against cold steel, gears grinding in the strain of warring forces of nature.  His opponent was stronger, but Megatronus was already kicking out, was already slipping his foot in to hook along inner-thigh metal that was thin enough to rend. This was going to be power against speed, and he was going to have to use his speed this time if he was going to win.

It was unusual for him to be the smaller and faster of two opponents, but he could adapt.

The lines were clean that way, the story was simple.  If he played his part right, the larger, older mech from Altihex would be slowly shaken by the lighter blows of his younger opponent.  It would start with Megatronus at the disadvantage, unable to land a strong enough hit. Nothing would get through, nothing that he threw at Titan would matter, he would pretend to be outmatched and slowly running his energon down.  Then, at the last possible second, when the crowd was sure of Megatronus’s demise, he would slip a blade into a weak spot between Titan’s plating, severing vital wires, bringing the towering hulk of a competitor down.

He knew what he was doing.  This would go his way.

But…then again…that was what he had thought before Security showed up.

Megatronus howled in pain as his rhythm broke.  His opponent’s spiked hammer slammed into his left pede, flattening it into the sand, crushing his initial ideas in a puff of silver dust and outrage.  In front of him, Titan simply nodded as if confirming something to himself, shifting his lumbering weight and sweeping in an uppercut, an old-model hydraulic sledgehammer pulling back for a blow.  He was so smooth, so slow, that it was like watching from a distance. His golden optics looked down on Megatronus, and read him in the way that only a veteran could.

They knew his plans.  They knew how he saw the battlefield, and how he saw the crowd.  They knew what sorts of strategy he would employ, and they already knew a hundred ways to counter it.

Titan thought ahead with the sort of cold precision that was necessary to win, while Megatronus…

Megatronus had been thinking with algorithms and numbers and code for much too long.  He’d not yet returned to the simplicity of action and reaction, cause and effect, push and shove.  His mind was still pursuing the bigger picture, and still looking for the right code which would unlock the sequence leading to Titan’s defeat.

He had to stop thinking.  He needed to get ahead enough to talk to Titan before Titan made it way too short of a match.

There was the smallest opening.

He took it.

Now.

Megatronus rolled.

He ducked in forward, toward the incoming punch, under it, his dead foot still trapped beneath the hammer’s spikes…and his live foot moving to grip the hammer in-between his treads.  With leverage on his enemy’s weapon, and with his enemy committed to an attack, Megatronus threw his entire momentum into catapulting the hammer upward, releasing it from between his feet to fly at Titan as he rolled underneath.  

The sand was soft.  

It cushioned him, briefly, and he could feel it sliding underneath him, working for him and against him, slippery.

He heard one of Titan’s feet thud down into the ground beside his head, saw the large mech stumble in trying to contend with his missed shot, with the hammer that shook his frame when they collided.  His whole bulk turned as he miss-stepped, his dim yellow optics finding Megatronus’s again, the mind behind them working at lightning speed even if the mechanisms of his body moved too slowly. He was already falling.

Pointedly.

Falling on Megatronus, who had just completed a roll on a damaged foot and who hadn’t yet made it to his feet in the slippery, silvery sand.  

Megatronus’s sword went up.

Titan’s bulk came down.

It should have been more obvious, he knew.  He’d seen the other mech fight. He’d seen the achingly ponderous way he appeared to move around the field, and he’d seen the small, fast mechs wailing on him without effect, trying to cut him down slowly until Titan placed his lucky hit and took them offline.  It had seemed so obvious to Megatronus to learn from their mistakes, to target the weak points, to toy with his opponent for the crowd, and then to slip in and make certain he hit those weak points with everything he had. It had seemed so obvious right up until the point he realized Titan was expecting it, right up until he figured out those ‘weak points’ were carefully laid traps.

Megatronus had not been ready for this.  

He’d been so convinced that he needed to speak with a mech from Altihex, so convinced that being back in the arena would be coming full circle for him that he hadn’t stopped to consider who he was fighting and if he could win.  Just being able to fight again was what he’d wanted, wasn’t it?

Of course it was.

It was.

There had not been a day in the factory when he had not missed the arena…and now that he was back in the arena he wanted it even more.  He wanted the crowds, and the bitter scent of sand and flame. He wanted the taste of victory and the splash of energon, glowing for a moment even outside of the body before it burnt through its catalyst and cooled.  

He wanted it to be exactly as it had been , and now, because of his time in the factory, it couldn’t be that way again.

It couldn’t.  

It could be better.

It took more strength than he had to catch the weight of a falling mech on his sword, feeling the blade slice wires and fuel lines as it slid between his armored plates.  

If there was one thing that he’d taken away from the factory, it was knowledge.  Megatronus had learned more than he gave himself credit for, and nearly all of it had been about drones…how they were pieced together, where their weaknesses were, and where their hard lines were connected.  

As it turned out, mechs weren’t built so differently from drones.   Before the factory, he wouldn’t have known precisely where to slip a blade to short the ground wire on Titan’s pile-driver arm.   

Now, he did.

He’d learned .  Today, in this battle.  Yesterday, in the factory.  He’d learned. He knew what he was capable of, and what he was willing to do.  He knew when to use those capabilities, and when to be patient and wait.

It was a lesson that Titan knew well.

Titan had a momentum greater than any Megatronus had seen, and because of that he chose to move slowly.  He chose it, because it was the best way for him to survive. If he moved fast, he’d burn too much fuel. If he moved slowly, he only needed his own weight to make more power.

Carefully timed.

Carefully thought out.

Carefully sweeping his hammer toward Megatronus, even while he fell on Megatronus’s sword.

This time, however, Megatronus was expecting Titan’s counter-attack.  He was hoping for it, even, needing Titan to bring his arm in close enough range for this new plan to work.  Closer. Closer.

Now.

Megatronus heaved, pushing with all his might, relying on the full force of his strength to lodge his sword into Titan’s shoulder expertly enough to redirect the path of Titan’s fall.  He could not stop his opponent’s hammer from slamming into the side of his arm, but he didn’t want to—hoping the momentum from the hit would push him far enough away.

He stumbled, reeling from the strike.  

In front of him, Titan collapsed onto the sand, his weight pushing the sword in his shoulder in deeper.

Scant moments later, Titan’s pile-driver went off.

The surprise on Titan’s face was what Megatronus craved.  It was proof of his success, as the pile-driver struck out again and again, hitting nothing, its control circuit broken at the exact point where Megatronus’s sword was lodged.  It slammed again, into the air, and Titan brought it around uselessly, trying to get it underneath himself to stand up. He managed, barely, the pile-driver impacting heavily onto the ground, crushing sand into an even finer powder where it hit.  It pounded again, and again, and again, pulverizing metal into dust, creating a cloud around the fallen gladiator as he struggled. Megatronus did not approach.

He knew better.

He’d been right.  In this state, Titan was at his most dangerous, re-calculating new plans and intent on staying alive.  For the first time Megatronus saw the other moving with his full speed, his legs sweeping under him, his optics flashing from within the haze.  Both feet hit the ground at the same time as the warrior emerged, his towering hulk suddenly rocketing forward as he leapt.

The pile driver didn’t stop.  

Neither did Titan.  Megatronus could hear the driver pounding at the other’s side, throwing off his rhythm, providing counterpoint to his footfalls in the sand.  It was slowing him, forcing him to change positioning and watch his footwork, forcing him to swing the hammer in off-times to balance, but he was working around it.

He’d done it faster than Megatronus had expected.  That was impressive.

Now, they were on even footing for the first time since the start of the match.  

Megatronus cracked his opponent’s knee joint.  Titan took out a chunk in Megatronus’s side. The crowd cheered and silenced and cheered, rising and falling in waves to mark each hit that was struck.

It was like music.

It was like home.

It was like both his homes.

Each beat of the pile driver brought him back to the factory, listening to Perceptor explain the difference between randomness and chaos, his patient voice lost in between the pounding of machinery.  Perceptor had taught him how to read erratic code in the same way Clench had taught him how to read erratic opponents. They’d been lessons that he needed, and he’d learned them well.

If he was going to win today, he’d need to remember them both.

Titan grabbed him by the throat.

He grabbed Titan by the hilt of his burnished hammer, and kicked, flipping backward and tearing his enemy’s weapon free.  There was no slowness in either of their motions, any more. This would be the last chance that he had to talk.

“I need your help,” Megatronus propositioned, planting his feet back on the ground, his servos adjusting for the massive weight of the hammer he now held, two handed.  

“That is a funny thing to ask the mech you’re trying to kill,” Titan rumbled back, kicking up a spray of silver sand as he advanced. “I don’t suppose this has anything to do with the Enforcers waiting for you outside?”

Red fire-light glinted off the hammer, and Megatronus frowned, sensing out the intent of the question even as it unnerved him that Titan already suspected so much.  “Would it matter if it did?”

“I am a mech with a sponsor.  Enforcers are not something that I fear .”  Energon dripped slowly from his shoulder wound as he advanced, pooling over ancient brown armor and integrated spikes. “Tell me what you want quickly, speck.  The crowd will be calling for your death soon.” He reached up, grunting once in effort, and pulled Megatronus’s sword out, sending a splash of bright pink down to purple-tinted sand.  

The pile driver stopped, the circuit finally broken.

“I want to get rid of drones.  Permanently.”

The other laughed, and gripped the long sword carefully in one hand, his large thumb wrapping around the hilt. His stance changed and Megatronus took a step back, surprised.  

Titan knew how to fight with swords.  

“So you were the one who blew up the factory yesterday,” the old warrior mused, hunkering himself down into a defensive posture that put his heavy armor solidly facing Megatronus.  He took a step forward. “That will be useless in the long run, you know. Just like this conversation.”

“It won’t,” Megatronus insisted, looking for an opening to take, aware of the crowd waiting eagerly for action, “If you can get me a contact inside the Altihex processor plant.”

Titan continued to advance, but his expression changed.  The cruel jest was gone from his golden optics, and was replaced with the same cold calculation Megatronus had seen at the start of the fight.  Titan, as he had suspected, was no fool. “Having a contact at the plant will not help you if you are dead.”

“That does not matter to me.”  He did not glance away, holding Titan’s gaze, well aware that the gargantuan fighter was still thinking of ways to rend him limb from limb.  His words, now, were what it all came down to. “If the drone master chips are replaced with my chips, then they aren’t going to be a problem for anyone.”  

“That’s awfully altruistic for a gladiator,” Titan scoffed, clearly not buying it.  The crowd behind him was starting to become restless, and Megatronus knew he would have to take action soon.

“Gladiators all die sooner or later.  The only way to be remembered is to make an impact first.”

“Good answer.”  Titan smirked. “But what is to stop me from killing you now and selling out this ‘chip’ of yours to secure my legacy?”  

Megatronus clenched his teeth, not understanding how a mech who read the choreography of an opponent so easily could fail to miss this crucial fact.  “It will be a short legacy,” he bit back, planting his feet deeply in the sands, “if everyone who cheers for you is put out on the streets.”

Titan only laughed, and Megatronus knew that his time was up.  The cruelty was back in the other’s movements, and Titan had begun to circle in him slowly, planting his feet in shorter steps than he had used to swing the hammer.

It was a fighting style that Clench had used…but while wielding a weapon that he was unfamiliar with, Megatronus had no way to counter it.  

This was where he had failed.  He had lost his advantage in the fight, and he had lost his chance to convince Titan.  Where had he gone wrong?

Couldn’t another gladiator, who needed the approval of the crowd to please his sponsor, see why it was dangerous to let drones exist?

He swung out with the hammer, both hands arching the swing, the motion clicking into place but not quite fast enough.  Titan was too familiar with his own weapon to be easily hit.

He avoided it deftly, stepping in close, pressing the tip of Megatronus’s own sword against Megatronus‘s torso, and laughed the same dark laugh he had a moment ago. “I will miss those cheers.  I will. But a survivor knows that if a building is about to fall, you vacate the premises .  With the money I could make off of you, I could buy my freedom from my sponsor.”  

The sword slid in, agonizingly slow, expertly slicing fluid lines and sensitive components.  

Megatronus’s frame shuddered in the sudden shock, unable to cope with the intrusion, seeing alerts blossom at the edges of his HUD.  His vision went to static as the blade was pulled free, and then came back with sudden, terrible clarity. Energon arched. His energon, flicked across the backdrop of the crowd, reflecting purple, red, and blue light off of an iron blade as Titan continued, “Think on it, Megatronus.  You have just offered me that which I’ve always wanted, and I…” He glanced back to the crowd. “Can give this to you, in return.  Isn’t this how every gladiator dreams of dying?”  

It was.  

It was better than a prison cell, dying in pain and alone.  Forgotten. It was a worthwhile death; the best death a mech from the Underground could hope for, to go out listening to the sound of your name, to the sound of adulation and victory and hope.  Part of him wanted this.

Most of him wanted this.

He wanted it so much more than the alternative of dying in an Enforcer cell…

But until Titan said yes, there was no choice for him.

“You’re a fool,” Megatronus whispered, feeling his fingers going slack over the hammer’s hilt no matter how hard he tried to grip it.  The politicians would build more drone factories. The workers would lose their jobs. There would be no more cheering, soon. “If I die, then nothing is going to change.”  

Destroying the factory alone was not enough; not without the new processors to go into the new drones when it was rebuilt.

“Nothing ever does.”  Titan lifted the sword, aiming the point over his spark chamber.  “We fight, we win until we lose, and then we die. It will always be like this for those who live in the Underground.”  

Megatronus’s hand fell away from the hammer’s hilt…

…and clenched into a fist.

“That,” he rasped, “is where you’re wrong.”

He caught Titan in the jaw, putting the entire force remaining in him behind the punch, the heat from his optics blazing across his faceplates through the agony from his sword.  

Titan had missed the point, entirely.  

Perhaps it was because he’d been a gladiator too long, or perhaps it was from being owned by a sponsor, having to live each day under the command of someone rich and self-important, but Titan was wrong.  Living in the Underground did not have to be about struggling, having only minor successes until one died. It did not have to be about wallowing in moment, devoid of the luxury of planning, merely hoping that the next day would not be worse than the last.

Living in the Underground was about triumphing over each adversity.  It was about being able to adapt to situations outside of one’s programming.  It was about being given nothing, and still managing to make something out of it at the end of every day.  It was about surviving, when no one else believed in that survival but yourself.

It was about victory.

It must have been a long time since Titan had believed in that, and even Megatronus admitted it had grown more difficult to see in the face of so much misery…

But he’d managed.  He’d managed, and he’d taken great risks to ensure that the opportunity for claiming success remained available to everyone who’d come to watch him fight.  That was what the arenas were here to remind them of.

Victory.

Megatronus refused to be denied that, he refused to let Titan deny him that, and he utterly refused to die just because it was convenient.

He was too full of rage to die, driven by pain, driven by injustice, driven by the need to sow the seeds that failure had wrought.  It had been a beautiful temptation, to lie there, to let his life eke out around his own blade, to listen to his name--his name!--cheered by the throngs, but it was a temptation that he could not take.  It didn’t matter that he’d failed to get his point across to Titan, because he knew the one thing that Titan would relent to in the end.

Victory.

Megatronus knew what to do now.

Titan thrust the sword forward, caught off guard by the punch but not losing the opportunity to strike a killing blow.  It missed by a wire, the thin metal slicing across Megatronus’s torso plating as he twisted, drawing upon the fire within.  

He was Megatronus.  He fought for the Underground—in Kaon, in Altihex, in Tarn and Vos and Iacon.  He had the power of a miner, the intellect of a technician, and the support of a sponsor-free team.

His fingers gripped onto Titan’s hammer, and for the first time tonight they felt sure.  It hadn’t been that the weapon was slow, he realized, it was that he had been using it slowly.  He had moved it, himself, instead of letting it move him, instead of letting its weight do the damage.  It needed the right strokes.

Just like the hammers in the factory, driven by motors, propelled by the momentum of rotation.  He was the fulcrum. He only needed get the hammer started.

This was something he could do.  

Megatronus…smirked.

Not only was this something he could do, but compared to learning drone machine coding languages, it seemed almost easy.  

He swung the hammer, and let it move, let it rock him. He advanced, planning every stroke, not counting on each swing to hit but making every motion count.  Titan sliced his sword and Megatronus deflected it, sweeping the hammer down and bringing a knee up, jamming the guard into a transformation seam. Titan flinched.

Megatronus back-handed him.

The crowd cheered.

His hammer connected again, and for the first time Megatronus could remember he heard Titan cry out, fueling the fires of his own aggression.

He slammed it down, again, and spun, and slammed it down again. The screeching of stressed metal grated over the roar of the crowd, and Megatronus, knowing his own strength would fail him soon, gripped the hammer with both hands and slammed it down.  Again. The weight lifted him, and he kicked out.

Titan fell.

The sword went flying, and only distantly did he register the sound of it burying itself in sand. He was already bringing the hammer down on Titan’s arm, on his legs, pounding, ceaseless, optics bright enough to reflect off each silver flash of chrome.  He was a victor, in his home arena. He was a mech who would not be brought down.

Ever.

Never again, unless he willed it.  There would be no defeat for Megatronus, even if he were dragged off tonight in chains.   

If he failed even once, he’d just keep twisting it until it was success.  

Titan, in a last, final effort, brought his broken pile driver to bear, slamming it toward Megatronus’s head, and with a roar Megatronus crushed it out of the way, the hammer burying itself deep inside the shoulder gears. This fight was finished.

Megatronus had won.

He laughed strangely, seeing the warnings still flashing on his internal screen, feeling the far-off drain of energon depleting him, slowly…but he had won.  Titan lay beneath him. He had won. He had not failed.

Nothing had changed.  Everything had changed.

All he had to do was finish what he’d started.

Megatronus raised the hammer.  The crowd screamed, cresting, cheering as they had always cheered, and showering their adulations as they always did upon the winner.  Believing in him. Watching him. Following his success.

Megatronus let them cheer.  Then, looking pointedly down at the mech who had just fallen, Megatronus brought the hammer down for the finishing blow.

It landed, burying itself in the ground next to Titan’s head, sending up a spray of sand that Megatronus could hear tinkling in the sudden hush that fell.  

He hadn’t killed his opponent.

He wasn’t going to, now.

The older mech under him did not flinch, still staring up at Megatronus, and still waiting.  He coughed once, and silver sand cascaded off his shuddering frame, falling back to the arena beneath him. “Are you afraid to end me, speck?”

“You know what I want.”  Megatronus let the insult roll off of him, not detecting anything other than curiosity in Titan’s tone.

“It’s against the rules to leave a fallen competitor alive,” Titan tried to growl, but only ended up coughing up a fleck of oil.

“What are they going to do, arrest me?”  Megatronus looked to the crowd, most of which had started to realize that something was wrong.  Some were still cheering, but most were watching, wondering what was going to happen next.

“No, but my sponsor…”

With a growl Megatronus advanced again, rising his knee to slam his treads down on his prostrate opponent. “Your sponsor will what , Titan?”

Golden optics narrowed, and Megatronus held his chin high, well aware of what Titan would not speak aloud.  He had been down that route before.

“I remember well what sponsors do to failures,” he said quietly.

“I could still sell your information on the street—”

Megatronus pushed down on Titan’s chest, hard, feeling the thick metal flexing underneath his weight. “And if you do that, you’ll be alienating the only team that would still have you now.  I happen to know they’re going to be short a gladiator…and with a name change and a new paint-job, you’d fit right in.”

Titan’s intake slowed, and Megatronus found himself the recipient of a cold, calculating stare once more.  “You can’t trust me.”

“I don’t have to.  You’re a survivor, Titan…just like the rest of us.  You’ll do what is necessary to win ,” Megatronus said, and looked up to the crowd.  This was his last night in the arena, and it was his last victory as a gladiator.  

There was nothing left to fear from Titan.  A sponsored mech who had lost a title-match had no credibility, and no name.  Titan would either wander from information-salesmech to information-salesmech, trying to show them a drone processor and convince them that Megatronus had programmed it…or he’d talk to Clench, and make a new life for himself by getting the team access to the Altihex processor plant.

Titan had survived this long.  It was obvious which action he would take.

This meant that Megatronus only had one, great battle left to fight.

His gaze shifted to the crowd.  “Are you listening?” he asked them, his voice echoing up to the stands and beyond, the last remaining murmurs falling silent as he spoke.  

They could hear.

“Outside, Enforcers are waiting to take me away.  They’ve come to deprive you of your entertainment, because some primary rank technician can’t tell the difference between a hover tank and a dock loader.”

Megatronus could hear a few murmurs starting at that, and more than one helm was turning to look at the entrances.  Some even laughed, but he recognized the nervousness in the laughter. This situation was all-too-familiar for them.

“If it could happen to me, then it could happen to you.  It has happened to you.  The members of the upper class have hired drones to take your jobs.  They’ve passed laws to take your rights. They’ve made smelting pits to take your lives.  The only thing they have not taken is HERE. Our arenas.” He gestured, broadly, encompassing the entire stadium in a single sweep of his arm.

“And now, because they can, they have decided that only WE are brutal enough to burn down a factory—when THEY have been the ones leaving our streets unpaved, leaving our transports in disrepair, leaving only the most dangerous of jobs available to us.”

The crowd was still quiet, still listening to his words, and Megatronus was surprised.  When gladiators spoke in the past, it was about victory. Such triumphs were what the Underground came to see, to revel in, and to believe in.  Gladiators who spoke words like his had either never existed…or never survived to reach the status he now held.

They weren’t all buying it, of course.  Not every mech in the stands was from the Underground, and many of the ones who were had seen what happened to those who spoke as Megatronus did.  However, even they were still waiting to see what Megatronus said next.

He knew he couldn’t stop.

“There is nothing I can do to change my fate—but it is not the same for you.  The drones are gone, now. Your jobs are safe. Show them why you're better than drones.  Be unique. Ask questions. Learn from what you have seen tonight.”

He smirked.

“This is the legacy that I leave to you—the legacy of a gladiator.  The legacy of the Underground. Our legacy of triumph.  Remember this legacy, and use it.”    

He raised his fist, holding it in the air where it reflected red, blue, and purple fire.  “Show the world what the Underground is capable of!”

It was the sign of victory claimed—the signal of the end of the fight.  It was the sign to cheer, to shout the victor’s name, to shower down the cheap streamers available at most of the sales stands or, if you were bitter, to shower down the losing ticket stubs from your bets.  

The crowd did not disappoint him tonight.

His optics dimmed to low power, saving energy while he let the sound wash over him.  He held his fist aloft, feeling energon trickling down the seams of his plating, watching it blur the circuit lines that Rumble had painted on him at the start of the match.  

If this was the end, then it was a good end.

It was a memory clip that he would savor for a very, very long time.

“Is that it, then?”  Titan asked from where he lay in the silver sands.

Megatronus could only laugh.  “The last old road for me, and the first new road for you.”  Finally lowering his fist, he reached the stained arm down to offer it to his fallen opponent.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve taken a new road.  There are some members of my team that might want to come with me.”  The dark mech’s large fingers closed over Megatronus’s, and with some effort he stood up.

“Clench might have enough to buy them, with the purse he made off me tonight.”  Normally, much of that money would have gone into getting Megatronus patched up.  With the cold feeling of a large wound in his side, it was a luxury he was sorely going to miss.

“I have might have a few shanix hidden away, as well,” Titan murmured, swaying slightly as he tried to keep his legs beneath him.  Neither of them was in any condition to walk off the field, but both refused to give in to the disgrace of collapsing yet—not when there were so many voices still calling both of their names.  “So what will it be?”

Confused, Megatronus tilted his helm.  “Be?”

“It will have to be a better name than yours, so that they’ll catch on to it quickly.  Megatronus takes much too long to say.”

Listening to the way that it was chanted, he could only disagree.  There was power in a name…and there was power in his. “I am not changing mine.  Cybertronians used to have gods. They were figures to live up to, each having mastery over a fundamental skill.  I do not know the names…”

Titan looked down to him, almost jeering.  “You are too young to know them.”

“And you are too old to function,” Megatronus bit back, having to cancel out warning lights that continued to pop up within his vision.  His body was in no condition to support him, but if he could stay on the field until the Enforcers came then he’d be making an even bigger impact for the crowd. “There was a god of light, and a god of time, a god of crafting, and a god of trickery.”

“There were many more than that,” Titan murmured, watching his own end of the field.  No one was coming out from his starting pit, but Titan did not seem surprised. Sponsors did not send medics out to greet the fallen.  “There were gods whose names were not meant to be spoken…”

“…and that was a name that they gave me,” Megatronus mused, focusing on the words as the battle-rush wore off.  Already, the pain was becoming unbearable, but he knew he would not have to endure it for long. Security would be coming soon.  He could see their blue and red lights flashing from where Clench was standing, and he could see Clench arguing with them even as they started out onto the sand.  “Megatronus, who was the god of entropy. Megatronus, who was the god of flame. Megatronus, who led an onslaught against—“ A sharp lance of agony tore through his right side, and he could only wince as one of his stabilizing systems shut down.

He felt himself falling forward.

He also felt the large, dark hand which grabbed him from behind and kept him standing proud.

“Who led an Onslaught against the god of chaos himself, until he was taken into the arms of chaos and fell.  I accept this name.” The large mech watched the Enforcers approach, and started to move in front of Megatronus to block their path.  “Provided that you don’t continue down the same path as your predecessor.”

“I’m not planning on it,” Megatronus replied, and reached out to keep Onslaught back.  “Talk to Clench. Tell him what happened here.”

The first officer stopped, and Megatronus could see a stasis gun at the ready in his arms as his team moved in behind him.  Onslaught took a final step toward them, letting his powerful engine rev with a sound that reverberated off the walls of the stadium, holding the crowd’s attention on him.  It was enough of a display that the entire squad raised their weapons, and Megatronus could see more than one hand shake as it tried to find the trigger.

Still, he smirked—amicable but dangerous, and moved carefully around the dark bulk of his adversary-turned-ally.  “I see you’ve come to arrest me,” he noted, finding the one mech in the group who had a pulse rifle held tightly in his grasp.  

“We don’t want any trouble,” the lead officer replied, his rifle steady.  

“I know.”  Stepping forward, Megatronus locked his gaze with the mech who spoke, and was pleased to see a few of the others retreat back.  Like Perceptor, they were only a bit better than half his size…but unlike Perceptor, Megatronus could see scuffs on their armor and a fair share of patch-up jobs.  The few Enforcers who patrolled the Underground worked as hard for their wages as the factory grunts did.

It would have been interesting to see how good at their job they actually were.

Tonight, however, he was tired.  He was in pain, and he was barely standing but for the support of Onslaught and the force of his own pride.  Hammers and swords and bludgeons could do a lot of damage to a lightly armored Enforcer, but a pulse rifle was its own beast in the hands of a well-trained mech.

Megatronus turned, and raised his fist a final time.  The crowd saluted back.

It was enough of a memory to carry him forward, letting a timid Enforcer place a stasis harness over his freshly-upgraded armor, and following the lead officer forward off of the soft, silvery sand.

Onslaught would be the one to take the banner from here—to meet with Clench and go over Megatronus’s research, to use the oscilloscope to collect the spark frequency from a drone, and to plant the chip into the Altihex factory.  

He’d done his part.  

He had.

But a gladiator fought until they’d fallen…

…and he had not fallen, yet.

Chapter Text

For the first time in his relatively short existence, the Communications Drone found himself staring up at a ceiling when he came online.

While there was nothing particularly remarkable about the ceiling in question, it did provide a sense of confusion for the drone. He did not understand why he was looking at a ceiling, and he did not understand why his sensors indicated that he was laid out horizontally. It was an unusual way to wake up, especially if there was a suitable docking closet available where he could stand up while recharging. As he remembered seeing plenty of sensible-looking closets in the hallways of the Iacon Archives when Orion had been carrying him, the drone was confused by why he was horizontal now. A dark recharge closet would have been a much more agreeable location to come online, with less extraneous light and data to barrage him and a comfortable wall jack to be plugged into.

He was not plugged into anything, now. That was a more dire situation than his axis of alignment. After three days without recharging, his energy levels had passed their lower allowable limits. Although his time offline had helped to restore a small charge to his systems, it would not be enough to provide even a few hours of operating time. Already, errors were popping up. He was used to dismissing internal warnings ever since the fire had left him with more than he could handle, but he was learning there were some warnings that even he could not dismiss. The final error he had received earlier before going offline had been the most surprising, as ‘Power Level Critical—emergency shut-down initiated’ had not been something he’d known was part of his programming.

This bothered him even now. As he was a machine, he should have been able to deal with system errors that would stop him from performing his tasks. He had done so for the drone in the factory, and that ability had helped him to escape. It would have been equally useful to be able to communicate with Orion that a recharge was needed. If he had been able to delay the warning, he might have been in a better position than he was now: standing up, instead of laying down.

He did not like aspects of himself that were beyond his control.

However, if that shut-down protocol had been added by Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, third nexus council, then it would not have been possible for him to counteract. There would not have been anything that he could have done against a direct command from his owner. Theoretically, that should have made him feel better.

It did not. The feelings that he experienced toward Senator Ratbat were becoming complicated, influenced by knowledge that the Senator had made most of the design decisions that went into his construction but also influenced by the knowledge that the Senator had once ordered a memory wipe on him that had decreased his efficiency. He was aware that his owner considered him an unliving machine, but he was also aware that his owner considered him a piece of art—and if there was one thing that Ratbat held in regard above all other things it was art.

He was programmed to obey orders given to him by Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, third nexus council. Doing so provided him with a sense of satisfaction. Going against those orders or acting without a direct order made him uneasy.

Right now, he was very uneasy.

Not having Ratbat nearby was strange to him. There had never been a point when the drone had been outside of Ratbat Holdings without the Senator around, and the fact that he had come to be at this place without specific instructions made him more than uncomfortable. Given how he had arrived at the Archives, it was entirely possible that his owner did not even know he was alive at this moment.

This would ordinarily have prompted an immediate attempt at communicating with the transmission tower, to alert the Senator to his status.

However, his protocols had changed since he had been memory-wiped and brought back online. Ratbat had programmed in a rigid priority structure that outlined his daily actions. Whichever tasks held the highest priorities would be accomplished first. By following these priorities, even now, he was still technically obeying the Senator’s orders.

When he had still been in the transmission tower, the highest priority had been to finish deciphering Divide’s database. This prompted him to leave Ratbat holdings and visit the drone factory, where he could make contact with Perceptor.

Once he had reached the factory, the highest priority had been to find Perceptor so that he could gain access to the Core—where he could then obtain the signatures that would allow him to finish deciphering Divide’s database. The fire had interrupted this priority.

Because of the fire, the highest priority had been to survive, so that he could then contact Perceptor, gain access to the Core, obtain the signatures, and finish deciphering Divide’s database.

He had still not completed these high priority tasks. Until he was able to do so, sending an alert to Senator Ratbat about his current status was very, very, very low priority. Returning to the Transmission Tower and seeing Ratbat again was desirable, but not necessary. Right now, he needed to find a way to contact Perceptor.

In order to do this, he would need the right equipment.

Now having a reason to, the Communications Drone turned his attention to his surroundings. He was still horizontal, and appeared to be laid out on a table in a relatively small room with few furnishings and no windows. This room closely resembled an office, in the fact that there was a desk at the other end, a chair, and a bored-looking occupant. Installed on the desk was a computing console, and installed on the chair was the mech known as Orion Pax, who seemed to be sorting through a large array of news files on the monitor in front of him.

The Communications Drone watched the monitor carefully, intending to ascertain whether or not this console was capable of transmitting a message outside of the Archives. If it was, then it would become imperative to connect to one of its many visible ports—not just to commandeer a carrier wave for his message, but also to finally recharge.

Thankfully, the evidence that the drone could see was pointing towards the affirmative. Given the fact that Orion kept flipping away from his sorting task in order to watch a broadcast with the current date displayed at the bottom, there must have been a way for data to move onto his console from outside of the archives. If he was able to select that broadcast, then there additionally would have to be a way for him to make that selection by sending out a request. This meant that if the drone could find a way to connect to the console, then data could be sent out on the network and also received.

He could communicate with Perceptor.

This immediately shuffled the highest priority task to be ‘standing up.’

Standing would be made somewhat easier by the fact that Orion did not seem to be aware that he was awake yet. At the moment, his rescuer was watching a report about the fire at the factory, paying close attention as a tall mech with prehensile-looking limbs climbed gracefully over rubble without missing a line. The news-bot, who was clearly used to taking up precarious positions to provide the best vantage point to viewers, had plenty to say about the wreckage. Although there was no loss of life, he reported, the property damage alone was valued at more than a laborer’s lifetime net worth. Because of that, it was likely that the responsible party—a gladiator named Megatronus—would be put to death pending an official statement from the majority shareholder of the property: Ratbat Holdings.

There had been some concerns raised about the lifetime net worth of a gladiator as popular as Megatronus, but those had been laid to rest. Even if a gladiator made considerably more profit than a laborer, their life span was far shorter.

This would likely be the end for Megatronus.

Orion seemed suitably distracted, and possibly even disturbed by this news, unaware of the drone attempting to sit up on a table behind him. Under ideal conditions, Orion would have likely remained oblivious to any movements that the drone made, since Senator Ratbat had constructed him with the potential for stealth operations in mind. His joints were made to slide without noticeable friction, his engine was dampened so that changes in gears would not be heard, and his limbs were engineered with greater range of motion to prevent them from straining.

However, none of that could prevent Orion from noticing the clattering sound of limbs hitting the floor, when a drone with a lifetime net worth greater than a gladiator utterly failed to comprehend the mechanics behind standing up.

It was not a skill that the drone was practiced in.

It was compounded by the fact that he was still dangerously low on power, dealing with unfamiliar surfaces, and had been only patched up with basic repairs after journeying through the center of a sea of explosions. Everything hurt, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Orion, however, could. The young mech rose from his seat immediately, his concern evident, and wasted no time in approaching the Communications Drone. Crouching, he offered a blue hand. “Can I help?”

The drone stared at the hand, wondering why every time he interacted with Orion he found himself in a tangled pile on the floor. Being unable to answer, he said nothing. He did place his arm into the offered hand, however, as it provided him a means of standing and accomplishing his highest priority task.

Orion, he noticed, was staring at the drone’s unusual appendages.

Following the other’s gaze, he found himself staring at his lack of hands, as well. Given their current condition, it was becoming more obvious why he had been set on a table instead of plugged into an electrical outlet. Beyond the fact that Orion seemed to have no experience with owning a drone and no knowledge on how to plug one in, the red and blue mech would have still had difficulty managing any of the drone’s malfunctioning output jacks. His cable had been nearly incinerated in the fire, one of his arms was still damaged from his conflict with Divide, and the other was covered in melted packaging material.

He was a Communications Drone who had no means of communicating.

This changed his priorities once more. First, he needed to be repaired. Then, he could plug into Orion’s console so that he could recharge and have the strength to contact Perceptor, so that he could get to the Core, find the Signature Database, and solve Divide’s last riddle.

He did not like how many steps there were at this point.

“Is this painful?” Orion asked, interrupting the drone’s thoughts to indicate the twisted output pins on the arm that he was holding.

The Communications drone shook his head. Those pins had been damaged by Divide too long ago to bother him, now. He had erased the errors from his system completely.

With a nod, Orion proceeded to pull him up onto his feet with seeming ease. “Can you stand on your own, then?”

It took the drone a few moments to regain his center of gravity and get his dangling legs underneath him, but once he did he nodded. This was how he had been built, and this was how he preferred to be.

Orion let go, and the Communications Drone looked towards the console where the broadcast was still playing. The reporter had moved on to talking about other similar terrorist activities in Tarn, remarking about how the drone factory explosion made Kaon the third city to be majorly impacted by this growing threat.

His host seemed concerned by this news, as well, though Orion did not bother to look back at his monitor. “I managed to repair a few of your systems, though it was nothing major. There were some loose wires, and those were easy enough with the basic maintenance book that Alpha Trion lent me. You should be okay, if you rest and recharge—“

The very pointed glare that the Communications Drone was suddenly giving Orion—even through his blank faceplates--seemed to make the red mech pause. Holding up his plastic-coated arm-stump, he looked emphatically back towards the console, and then moved towards it.

Orion followed, clearly perplexed.

Moving the seat which Orion had been sitting in with one leg, the drone began searching the front of the console for the best plug. There were more than a few which his adaptive output pins could normally have inserted into easily, but with so few pins exposed under the sticky packaging material none of the ports available would work.

“If you indicate to me what you are trying to do, maybe I can help.” Orion offered, with a tone that was confused but also authoritative. It was clear that he did not approve of a stranger trying to jack into his computer.

The Communications Drone did not have much of a choice. Displaying the plastic coated pins to Orion once more as an explanation, he began searching the side of the console. He was too close to having access to a system he could use. He needed power, and he needed transmission capability.

It had been three solar cycles since he had been plugged into Ratbat’s tower.

“I didn’t see a vocalizer when I was trying to repair you…can you talk?”

The shake of his head was curt this time, as he focused on his task. If he could find a wide enough input jack, then even the scant few exposed pins would be able to sample the needed voltages.

He wanted to plug in.

He wanted to recharge.

He wanted to feel a network—any network--waiting at the back of his mind, ready to provide him with the data that he sought if he was diligent enough.

Never before had it occurred to him that having access to the extra processing power was something he had become used to—something he craved. In his memory, there had never been a point in time where he had been without it.

Now, he was.

He was without anything except his own thoughts. He did not even have the company of a second drone as he had in the factory, which had helped him formulate a plan to escape when burning debris was falling all around them.

He was alone, and he had no way to get into the system that was directly in front of him.

Orion took him by the plastic-coated arm, and pulled. Suddenly unsure of what his options were, the Communications Drone let him.

However, he could not take his optics off of the console. It was the highest priority task for him to communicate with Perceptor, and while that provided him with infinite motivation it also limited his understanding of his surroundings. He needed to get into the console. He needed it at a high-enough priority that it was impeding his ability to function. He was aware of this, but there was nothing he could do.

Apparently, his ordering of tasks could hinder him as much as it could help him. This concept was new and confusing, and as he tried to suppress his need to connect to something—anything, he barely noticed being moved to the other end of the desk. Orion was taking something out of a drawer, but the action seemed inconsequential next to the drone’s inability to find a large enough jack anywhere to accommodate his few working connectors.

What he did notice, finally, was the cool stream of air that suddenly blasted between his gummed-up input pins.

The drone jerked back in surprise.

Obviously not expecting that reaction, Orion dropped the arm that he’d been holding, startled.

They were both startled.

The drone could only shiver, caught between his single-minded need to connect to the console and the new, unfamiliar feeling of his most fragile components being cleaned. Still reeling from the sudden, over-abundant sensations the blast of air had caused, he let the appendage fall back to his side. Taking a step back, he shivered again.

This had never happened before.

He had experienced maintenance on numerous occasions, but often it had been while he was offline, or after shutting down unnecessary systems.   This time, it had felt like pain.

It was the only comparable sensation he knew of that could be equally intense.

Slowly, Orion lowered the can and stared at the Communications Drone. “I’m sorry.” He said, softly, after a moment. “I didn’t expect you to react like that. A moment ago you didn’t seem quite…real.”

Real.

Was that the proper description for the experience he’d felt?

He glanced down to his arms, and carefully brought up the one Orion had been holding for inspection. There was still significant blockage, compromising the majority of functional connection points. Currently, he was incapable of plugging into any of the console’s outlets. However, some small number of pin heads had been unearthed by Orion’s ministrations. With further effort, it was possible that more of the melted material could be removed.

He handed his arm back to Orion and steeled himself, taut.

“Alright. Now we’re communicating.” Orion smiled, and took the offered appendage, holding it with a firm grip to keep the drone from jerking his arm away a second time. He raised the spray-can, checked to make sure that they were both ready, and then released another burst of air.

The drone flinched.

“It seems strange to me that a drone would not be able to talk,” Orion continued, the sound of his voice followed by a second blast. “Although you can limit what I know about drones to Ratbat Holding’s commercials for household assistants.” He changed his grip to work from a slightly different angle. “I’d assumed that your vocalizer had been damaged in the fire, except for the fact that there is no damage anywhere that a vocalizer might be—which makes me wonder why you were constructed without one. If those commercials toting you as the ‘next evolution of machinery’ think that awkward silence is what we want in an assistant, then they have some funny ideas about their customers, and,” despite being as rigid as possible, the drone braced himself further at the sight of Orion reaching for a wire brush, “Beyond that, I’ve never known a machine to flinch.”

He set the canister down, changed his grip, and began brushing gently in between the tiny pins, working out the final pieces of the plastic that were lodged between.

This time, almost in stubbornness, the Communications Drone did not flinch.

“So you aren’t a standard drone,” Orion continued, not glancing up as he worked. “You don’t have the body type shown in the commercials, you don’t have a voice, and you’re finished with a carbon hexagonal matrix coating instead of a high-gloss polymer.” The drone slowly inclined his head, looking at the polished blue of his arm, noting how tiny glints of light reflected off of miniscule, multi-layered mirror-dust.

He had never noticed this, before.

“Someone wanted you to be striking. Maybe they wanted people to see you…but they didn’t want you to talk.” Orion lowered the brush back to the table and let go of the drone’s arm, growing quiet for a moment after his last statement as if trying to put the pieces together. “They probably weren’t counting on you getting lost, in that case. Alpha Trion and I might have remained completely stumped about your history…if your owner hadn’t given you a way to upload data about yourself.” He indicated the end of the drone’s arms, and then gestured towards his console. “You have my permission, now. Go ahead.”

Unsure if a question had been asked and unsure how to answer if it had, the Communications Drone took the time instead to inspect the tiny pins at the tip of his stub. He raised his arm, peered at them carefully, retracted them once and then protracted them again.

There was no jamming error.

They were in acceptable operating condition.

That was all he needed for now.

Turning, he immediately reached out for the input jack, sliding external pin-guards over the outlet until his sensors told him he was centered above a power source. Two pins extended, tentative, sampling the I/O frequency with maximum resistance, minimizing current draw until the port was deemed to be safe.

It was.

The drone plugged in.

“Take it slowly,” Orion cautioned, and distantly the Communications Drone felt the other’s strong fingers gripping onto his still-damaged arm.

They were not important.

The only importance right now was the feeling of a second system next to his own, the steady pulse of varying currents recharging his power buffers, and myriads of pristine, untouched data-files to sort.

He had not sufficiently recharged.

Now, he could.

There was little to stop him from copying what he wanted while he was connected, either, and as he sent queries out across the hardline he detected a system that was vast. This was the Iacon Main-branch National Archives, Iacon, third tier, corridor eight, terminal 2-B. He was currently logged in as Orion Pax, secondary rank, dock manager/archivist, 28-46253XZ. There was access to an immense array of information. There was access to several direct broadcasting stations. There was access to legal compendiums, local political establishments and enforcement agencies.

There was access to a transmission tower.

The ‘Jazz’ monitoring program was located there, surrounded by extensive firewalls. For the moment, the Communications Drone ignored it, aware that even a simple inquiry could alert the I/O program to his presence. What was important was that this terminal had access to the Cybertronian network. If he was able to compose a message to Perceptor, then it was likely he could slip it past the monitoring program before it caught on.

However, the communications drone was acutely aware that he was still standing in a room, his arm a prisoner of Orion Pax. To make his situation more complicated, Orion’s viewscreen was connected completely to his console, providing a visual representation of every action that he took.

It was difficult to concentrate, like this. Orion, externally, was standing next to him, watching over his shoulder as 126 different menus were raised and discarded. He could feel the other’s presence just as vividly as he could feel the data streaming through him. It confused him. He was not used to having an audience while he worked.

Beyond keeping a hand on his arm, however, Orion did not seem to be stopping him.

“What…are you doing?” Orion asked.

The drone hesitated.

Even if he could compose a message quickly to Perceptor, he did not want the contents to be seen by his guest. Orion was watching him closely, which meant that any suspicious activity might result in him being forcibly removed once more. With the superior strength that the dock manager/archivist had demonstrated, it was entirely possible that Orion Pax would sever the Communications Drone from the console long before his transmission was complete.

This prompted a new priority task to assert itself: to distract Orion Pax.

Recharging.

His reply was simple, a small line of text displayed in the top corner of the screen above the still-playing news report. The prehensile-limbed news chaser had switched locations to the site of a gladiatorial arena, and was now describing how the dock loader who had burnt the factory down had gone through reconstructive surgery to infiltrate the manufacturing facility.

“You can communicate, through there?”

Orion reached around the drone to pause the news-feed, freezing on a picture of the gladiator just before he was arrested. This news was definitely something that Orion was interested in, but the drone had unfortunately made himself more compelling at the moment.

He had little choice but to respond.

Yes.

Orion smiled.   It was different than Ratbat’s smile, and the drone found himself trying to understand it, trying to decode why the differences were present. “What can you tell me about yourself?”

He did not look away from Orion, but instead let his message scroll across the screen.

It was a long message, containing his serial number, manufacture date, time of manufacture, owner identification code, hours of continuous run time, maximum data throughput, maximum multitasking bandwidth, maximum speaker resolution, maintenance schedules, voltage sampling thresholds, interference guidelines—

“Okay, that…okay. That is a lot of numbers. Do you have a name?”

That was a much simpler inquiry.

No.

Although it was difficult to concentrate while trying to communicate on two fronts—both digital and analog, the drone knew it was equally distracting for Orion. If he was careful, he could compose his message to Perceptor while keeping the data-file hidden underneath the paused news broadcast.

“Who, er…who owns you?”

The problem, of course, with sending a message to Perceptor was that the message had to prompt a response from the scientist without giving the mech reason to alert Senator Ratbat, authentication 48-3927, third nexus council, to the drone’s current location. If Ratbat knew where he was located, then it was highly likely Ratbat would send someone to collect him and possibly initiate a memory wipe.

That would prevent him from completing his high priority tasks.

Equally problematic in the same regard was Orion’s inquiry.

Error—data corrupted. Owner identification code as follows:

Repeating the same string of numeric that he had provided earlier, the Communications Drone circumvented the question while still providing an answer. It was one that made Orion frown. This expression was equally as intriguing to the drone in its differences from Ratbat. Gone was the component that made the Senator’s expressions threatening…and in its place was an unusual sympathetic quality which made the recipient feel disappointed in one’s self for causing the expression in the first place.

The drone decided that both were dangerous.

“Is there anything more you can tell me about your owner or where you used to live?” Orion seemed to really be trying to help, which was confusing to the drone. He could not easily sense the motivation behind the questions, and without clear orders on how he was supposed to react there was nothing he could do but stare and answer them as best he could.

This question was not one that he wanted to answer. However, Orion Pax had worded it politely—which left the drone a way out.

No.

There was nothing more that the drone could tell Orion without jeopardizing his mission.

“I’m sorry.” The frown had left, but there was no smile in its place. “We will try to get you back to your owner in our own way, then. Alpha Trion suggested we contact the authorities once you are feeling better. How are you feeling?”

This was another difficult question, and the drone started to wonder why it was being asked something so inane. If Orion Pax had access to the Communications Drone’s programming and maintenance tablet, then he would be aware of any mechanical errors. Even without the tablet, it was apparent which parts of the drone were damaged from a simple visual analysis.

Still, it was obvious that Orion Pax had very little experience with drones, so he continued to distract him by indulging his curiosities.

Left appendage –

input/output operations 5% functionality

recharge operations 7% functionality

mobile operations 93% functionality

Right appendage –

input/output operations 63% functionality

recharge operations 71% functionality

mobile operations 94% functionality

Visor tint outside of tolerance

Cooling system, 37 errors reported, 36 errors overridden

Errors listed as follows:

“I think I get the idea,” Orion sighed, and let go of the arm that he was still holding before the drone could list the full extent of his errors. “You were damaged in the fire more than I can repair.”

That was not incorrect. The few repairs which the drone could detect would keep him operating, but they would not be enough to return him to his peak efficiency. His cable was still burnt, as well as some of his internal mechanisms and backup systems that had been exposed to heat greater than the allowable tolerances. Only a drone technician would be able to make repairs on many of those systems, and most drone technicians would not be easy to track down with the factory so recently destroyed.

This gave him an idea.

Professional assistance required.

“Yes,” Orion agreed, reaching for the monitor to pull up information on Ratbat Holdings. “I thought about contacting a drone technician to work on you. I could only find services through the drone manufacturing facility, however, and all of these forwarding codes are inactive.”

The Communications drone observed the codes that Orion had found, looking through the data as it loaded into the computing station’s cache. It recognized most of them as numbers which it had forwarded through the transmission tower, since many of Senator Ratbat’s employees had frequently been in contact with the factory. The Senator had always been closely entwined with the workings of drones.

However, none of these codes were useful at the moment due to the fact that the factory had burned down. Drone technicians were going to be almost impossible to contact through conventional means…but the communications drone had unconventional means at his disposal.  

Because of Divide’s memories, he had access to the forwarding code of the one mech he needed to see—Perceptor--and access to the composer’s unique origination code to ensure that the scientist came quickly. If he coded the message correctly, as he had done at first when communicating with the Node, then Perceptor would think Divide was calling him. This would not only prevent the technician from alerting Senator Ratbat, but would also ensure that he came in person. From there, the drone could explain his needs and convince Perceptor to provide him with the information that he required, one way or another.

Negative. Preparing inquiry now. Send inquiry? y/n

Still carefully hiding his message behind the frozen news program, the Communications Drone put the final touches into the file and compressed it for data transfer.

“You can do that?”

He could.

Affirmative. Send inquiry? y/n

Everything was ready to go. He would get only one shot at sending this, as the foreign origination code that he had written into the trailing sequence would alert the Iacon Library’s Transmission program to the fact that someone else was using Orion’s console. It would look like Divide had sent a message to Perceptor from inside the Archives.

However, to the ‘Jazz’ monitoring program, it might also look like an intruder had gained access to this particular room.

“Alright. You can send it. Alpha Trion did want me to learn as much as I could about you, and having a technician visit should clear up a few facts.”

Affirmative.

Wasting no further time, the Communications Drone pushed the message through. With everything in place and wrapped in a small, efficient package, it processed past the local tower immediately.

There were no immediate warnings, but this was not unusual. If the monitoring program were to catch on, it would not be for at least a few minutes…even if it happened to perform a frequent data stream analysis. Given that this was the Iaconian Archives, where information was constantly moving in and out and was supposed to do so with easy access, it was possible that the monitor would never notice a few mis-matched bits at all.

Even if it did, a simple inquiry to Orion’s terminal about his activities would be easy to clear up. Orion had authorized the transmission, after all.

Message sent.

“That quickly?” Orion, realizing the the drone did not seem to be disconnecting from his computing console, sat down in the chair to look at the outgoing message logs. “Have you done this before?”

Affirmative.

The Communications Drone waited, standing by the console awkwardly plugged in while Orion confirmed that a transmission had been made. With the dock manager/archivist sitting so close to him, he found that it was increasingly distracting to keep Orion Pax occupied. He had never had a conversation like this before.

He had never really had a conversation at all. Talking with another being was uncomfortable, and he was beginning to realize there were elements that he did not grasp. The long silence after his short answer was indication that there was something more expected of him, but he did not know what it was.

“You clearly worked with computers,” Orion ventured back into the derailed tracks of their dialog, closing the log window and resuming the file sorting that he had been performing prior to being disrupted. A quick glance to the twisted pins at the end of the drone’s stub provided the reason he had come to that conclusion. “So what were you doing at the factory?”

Direct questions were the easiest to answer, the drone realized. However, in this particular instance, the information that Orion was looking for and the information that he was willing to provide were not in the same field.

Repairs.

It was the best answer that he could give. It was the answer that Redirect would have given, and the answer that Ratbat would have given. It was much easier to understand than ‘Attempting to gain access to the Core to download illegal origination code data.’

Stated like that, the drone was starting to worry that convincing Perceptor might involve additional steps.

“And did you see anything while you were there? Do you know who set off the explosions, or why?”

Negative.